TVM Manchester Ltd (also known as TVM Sound) was incorporated on the 26th of September 1957, and manufactured amplifiers and PA equipment during the 1960s and 1970s. The company was based in the city of Salford, (now) a Greater Manchester borough in the north west of England, between the cities Manchester and Liverpool.

TVM equipment is rather rare, and it probably wasn’t being sold widely at the time because the brand is not particularly well-known outside the Greater Manchester area.

The fuzz box pictured here is, at the time of writing, the only known surviving example of a TVM pedal. Its casing appears to be made of a kind of molded resin, and is fitted with a sheet of bent steel upon which the electronics are built. Its date of production is unknown, but the following visible features on the pedal look distinctly 1960s:

• At least four germanium transistors, one of which appears to be an OC45 type
• A laminated ‘wafer’ Bulgin DPDT footswitch, which is the same part found in some of the earliest Fuzz Faces, Tone Benders and Pep Boxes
• A ‘patent applied for’ Rendar output jack socket (as seen in early Fuzz Faces and Rangemaster Treble Boosters, although the patent was only granted in 1964)
• The patent number RadioSpares input socket being a mismatch with the output is a good indicator that this TVM fuzz box may have originally had a fixed input cable
  
  

(Photo credit: Mas Vintage Electronics)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves. This is particularly important when it comes to obscure pedals like the TVM (Manchester) Ltd fuzz box, and I’d be delighted to hear from anybody with further information about them.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

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Overview

Jennings Electronic Developments (JED) was formed by Tom Jennings, following his dismissal from Jennings Musical Industries (Vox) in 1967. The vast majority of the historical information on this page about Jennings and the Jennings fuzz comes courtesy of Voxac100.org.uk, which is by far the most authoritative resource about the history of Vox & Jennings musical equipment.

During the period of 1968 until the early 1970s, Jennings produced a series of distinctive guitar effects pedals with rotary foot-operated potentiometers, and these foot controls worked differently for each of the different models. The pedals were painted in grey Hammerite (although a handful have resurfaced with a gold finish), and they featured a plaque on the bottom plate, denoting the model name & serial number.

A selection of late 1960s/early 1970s Jennings pedals is pictured above. Among the various different models from this series was a Jennings ‘Repeater’ pedal, which produced a tremolo effect, with a variable speed control; a Jennings wah-wah pedal, where the resonant peak was adjusted via the rotary pot, as opposed to the conventional treadle format; and various Jennings boost pedals with foot-operated rotary volume controls. (Photo credit: D. Johannson)

There were also four different models from the Jennings series that included fuzz effects. These were dubbed the Growler (combined fuzz & wah effects); the Cyclone (combined fuzz, wah, ‘siren’ and ‘hurricane’ effects); the Scrambler (combined fuzz, wah and various boost effects); and a simple standalone Fuzz unit.

Pedals in the Jennings line were built with circuits similar to earlier Dick Denney designs. Dick Denney, himself, continued working with Tom Jennings during this period. Given the scale of production of all of the Jennings equipment, it’s unlikely that the individual pedals were assembled by Denney.

The range of Jennings pedals was first reported being demonstrated at the British Musical Instrument Industries Trade Fair held in August 1968. A promotional advertisement for the show included pictures of early Wah, Growler & Scrambler pedals,¹ and a report of the show in Beat Instrumental made reference to the Repeater, Hi-Lo Boost and “several others”,² which reveals that the majority of the Jennings pedal designs had already been developed by 1968.

In 1969, Jennings Electronic Developments (JED) became known as Jennings Electronic Industries (JEI). Tom Jennings placed regular advertisements for Jennings equipment in Beat Instrumental, and the advertisements placed in 1969 suggest that the name change could have taken place between July and September of that year. The more precise date is unknown.

Following the name change, the branding on the bottom plates of Jennings pedals was adjusted accordingly. Pictured above is an example of the bottom plate from an earlier ‘JED’ fuzz, compared with a later ‘JEI’ fuzz. (Photo credit: C. Nelson & Y. Asai)

Jennings ‘Rotary Foot Control’ series

Jennings Fuzz (F.1)

The basic Jennings Fuzz unit was built following a textbook shunt-series feedback amplifier circuit, similar to the circuits found in other early British fuzz boxes such as Sola Sound’s two-transistor Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’, Arbiter’s Fuzz Face, and certain versions of the Vox Distortion Booster.

These fuzz boxes were incredibly simple in their operation, featuring just a foot switch to toggle between the effect and the bypassed sound, and the patented rotary control determined the loudness of the fuzz sound.

Jennings Growler (G.1)

Jennings’ Growler was a more sophisticated version of the standalone fuzz box. It included a wah-wah effect (controlled by the rotary pad), and foot switches to toggle the individual fuzz & wah sounds, or to combine the two effects together. (Photo credit unknown)

Jennings Cyclone (S.W.F.1)

The Jennings Cyclone further expanded upon their basic fuzz box. In addition to a wah-wah option, similar to the Growler, the Cyclone added new ‘siren’ and ‘hurricane’ noise effects, which could be combined with the fuzz & wah sounds. The particular Cyclone here has an interesting hole in the side that was plugged and painted over at the factory. This suggests that it may have originally been machined for the even more obscure Jennings ‘Bushwhacker’ model that came with an additional rotary control. None of the other Cyclones sighted thus far have this extra hole, however.

Jennings Scrambler (S.C.1)

This bizarre Jennings pedal combined fuzz, wah, and a series of boost options into a single giant multi-effects pedal. The Practical Electronics magazine took interest in this highly esoteric model, and referred to it in the November 1969 & November 1972 issues. (Photo credit: D. Johannson/API)

Rotosound pedals

For a brief period, the line of Jennings pedals was being distributed by the Rotosound strings company. It was reported that the business partnership between Tom Jennings and James How began in November 1968³

These Rotosound-branded pedals are considerably rarer than the Jennings versions. Nevertheless, the Fuzz and Growler pedals pictured above are otherwise identical to the more familiar Jennings F.1 and G.1, apart from bearing a different brand name. (Photo credit: S. Castledine & H. Seven)

The Jennings Wah-wah pedals were reportedly also branded for Rotosound in the late 1960s,⁴ but at the time of writing, there are none known to still survive.

Framus pedals

Jennings pedals were also briefly sold by Framus (a German instrument manufacturer), as exemplified by a number of gold painted Framus Growler (fuzz & wah) pedals that have resurfaced. It is unknown at this point whether any of the other pedals from the Jennings rotary series were rebranded for Framus. Unsurprisingly, the Framus Growlers overwhelmingly show up in Germany.

Jennings ‘Pedal Foot Control’ series

A suggested retail price list, dated December 1972, confirms that the Jennings ‘rotary foot control’ pedals were still in production into the 1970s, but the price list also makes reference to a newer series of ‘pedal foot control’ pedals. According to the December price list, the Jennings fuzz and Jennings wah-wah models were offered in both ‘rotary’ and in ‘pedal’ options, at the same price.

The Jennings Electronic Industries ‘pedal foot control’ units were built with the conventional ‘treadle’ enclosure, as had previously been used by many manufacturers around the world (including JMI) for volume control and for wah-wah effects. The JEI ‘pedal foot control’ series comprised a volume pedal (VC.1), a wah-wah pedal (WP.1), and also a fuzz pedal (FP.1).

The Jennings effects pedals with the rotary foot-operated potentiometer had been in production since 1968, and were advertised regularly, but the ‘rotary’ series appears to have been discontinued by the time that the JEI catalogue & price list of 1973 was published. The newer JEI ‘pedal control’ models were still pictured and listed, which suggests that the Jennings pedals with the conventional treadles eventually replaced the ‘rotary’ series.

The JEI treadle-style pedals were, however, probably only built for an extremely limited period. Of the three different ‘pedal foot control’ models, only a single exemplar of one model of the series is known to survive. The JEI ‘pedal control’ Fuzz, pictured above, features identical circuitry to the ‘rotary control’ Fuzz, and functions in exactly the same way, other than that the volume of the fuzz is controlled by the treadle, rather than by a rotary potentiometer.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to the Voxac100.org.uk resource.

The post Jennings Fuzz appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Barnes & Mullins is a well-known British musical instruments distributor, which was founded by banjo duo Samuel ‘Bowley’ Barnes & Albert Mullins in 1895. B&M-branded musical instruments have been sold across the world since the early 20th century, and the short period during the 1960s & 1970s when B&M were involved in the fuzz boxes trade makes up a very small chapter in the company’s history. ⁴

The earliest mention of a Barnes & Mullins fuzz box is from a report of the British Musical Instrument Industries trade fair, which was held from the 23rd to the 27th of August, in 1965.⁵ A ‘Tone Bender’ was described as being on offer by B&M, but the listed price of £14 suggests that the unit being demonstrated could have actually been the 1965 Sola Sound Tone Bender.

B&M might have been acting as distributers of Gary Hurst’s pedal, but it is equally possible, however, that B&M were offering their own version of the fuzz box, and that examples of this model simply aren’t known yet to have survived. There is nothing that suggests that the 1965 “B&M Tone Bender” is related to the Exel Shatterbox.

A new Barnes & Mullins fuzz box was advertised in the 1969 Bell Musical Instruments catalogue. This fuzz box was named the ‘Shatterbox’, and was part of the ‘Exel’ series of effects, which also included a treble booster and a reverb unit. The first known instance of B&M demonstrating their Exel series was at Musikmesse, in Frankfurt, in early 1969.⁶

The Exel Shatterbox was housed in a compact die-cast aluminium enclosure, as pictured above, and it had a simple control layout with only two dials to adjust the fuzz sound. These fuzz boxes typically resurface bearing a silicon two-transistor circuit, built on strip board. One particularly early example of the Exel Shatterbox is known to exist with a three-transistor circuit, built on tag board. (Photo credit: C. Nelson)

By the mid 1970s, Barnes & Mullins had discontinued the Exel pedals, and were supplying musicians with the B&M ‘Fuzz Unit’ instead. The Fuzz Unit was supplied to B&M by Sola Sound, and featured the same electronic circuit that Sola Sound were using in their ‘Jumbo’ Tone Bender, as well as for many of Sola Sound’s combined fuzz & wah pedals.

The B&M Fuzz Units typically came in orange enclosures (as below), with several different versions of the silkscreened graphics. Some examples came in dark grey enclosures instead. (Photo credit unknown)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Exel Shatterbox appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Kelly built guitar amplifiers during the 1960s and 1970s, and the range of different models is fairly well known among collectors of British amplifiers. The company was apparently also responsible for providing an early fuzz box to the British market.

John Kelly (Jr) recalled his father working together with Larry Macari during the early days of Kelly Amplification. Early Kelly amplifiers were reportedly boxed up & branded by Macari’s Musical Exchange, and Kelly (Jr) believes that there may have been a similar arrangement with regards to the fuzz boxes.⁹ This raises the possibility that the Kelly Fuzz Box may have been designed & built by Kelly, and simply marketed by Macari’s, or the fuzz box could have also been a [Macari] Sola Sound design that was rebranded for Kelly.

A very limited advertisement was placed in the music press, in 1966, signifying that the Kelly Fuzz Box was reportedly priced at £10.¹⁰ It is unknown, however, how many were built & sold, and there isn’t a single known surviving exemplar.

I would be delighted to hear from anybody who might have any further information about this fuzz box, or perhaps even any photos of these units. Readers’ contributions & images can be submitted via the form below, and I also welcome any messages via the general contact page.

Thanks to Jamie Kelly & John Kelly (Jr)

The post Kelly Amplification Fuzz Box appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Background

G. P. Electronics was a company in Bovey Tracey, Devon, founded by inventor Gerry Pope. G. P. manufactured guitar amplifiers and PA units during the 1960s & 70s, as well as treble & bass boosters, and a fuzz box, called the ‘Harmonic Generator’. Further information specifically about G. P. Electronics amplifiers can be found on Matthew North’s blog.

The majority of the information in this section comes thanks to John Wills, who has worked closely with Gerry Pope since joining G. P. Electronics as an assistant, in 1964, at age 14. More than fifty years later, Gerry Pope and John Wills are still working together, but have since moved on from electric guitar equipment to the hydroelectric power industry. The 1960s-era photo & advertisement on this page comes courtesy of John Wills.

Harmonic Generator

The Harmonic Generator was reportedly conceived in around 1964, after somebody referred Gerry Pope to an “American recording” of a fuzz sound. This places G. P.’s fuzz box amongst the very earliest offerings in the UK. Independent, strong anecdotal evidence confirms that the model was already available to the general public by around late 1965/early 1966.¹¹

The enclosures of the Harmonic Generator were manufactured from a combination of folded aluminium and plywood, and all of the construction was done at the G. P. Electronics workshop. Earlier Harmonic Generator units were fitted, as pictured, with round cream control knobs; while later models came with moulded plastic knobs, and were also manufactured in-house.

G. P.’s fuzz boxes were sold at a number of local music shops around Devon, as well as by Boosey & Hawkes in London. A text advertisement for the Harmonic Generator, placed in NME, in November 1966, was arranged by local promoter, Lionel Digby.

Legacy

Distinctively shaped like a wedge of cheese, with three control knobs at the front, and a circuit described in a promotional leaflet as having “four semi-conductors”, the parallels with the Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround are fairly obvious.

Based on testimonies from the manufacturers, as well as from a former owner of a Harmonic Generator, we can ascertain that the G. P. fuzz box actually predated Jim Burns’ offering. Gerry Pope, himself, was reported to have returned from a trip to London expressing dismay after having discovered that the Burns guitar company had copied their product.

Burns’ Buzzaround pedals were manufactured in significantly larger numbers than the G. P. Electronics fuzz box, and would consequently go on to inspire other fuzz boxes during the 1960s. These including the highly successful British-built Vox Tone Bender MKIII & Sola Sound Tone Bender MKIV pedals, as well as the the Italian-built Elka Dizzy Tone.

The lasting legacy of this obscure fuzz box from Bovey Tracy can be seen in the very many versions of Tone Bender MKIII/MKIV & Buzzaround pedals that hobbyists and businesses continue to build to this day.

Notable users

G. P. Electronics Harmonic Generators were reportedly sold to Martin & Glen Turner, later of Wishbone Ash.

Three fuzz boxes were also received by the Shadows. John Rostill may have used the Harmonic Generator for the fuzz bass parts on the Shadows’ Bombay Duck & Tennessee Waltz, but because of the group’s affiliation with Burns Guitars, it’s also possible that they used the Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround as well. One eyewitness described, in 2009, seeing the Shadows perform in the late 1960s with what could have been a Harmonic Generator.¹²

One G. P. Harmonic Generator was also used at Advision Studios, in July 1966, for the recording of the New Vaudeville Band’s Winchester Cathedral.¹³

Reader appeal

At the time of writing, there are no known surviving exemplars of the G. P. Electronics Harmonic Generator. If readers might have any further knowledge or experiences with this obscure fuzz box, or perhaps even photos of any surviving exemplars, then please get in touch either via the form below, or by contacting me directly.

Thanks to Mick Clarke & Matthew North, as well as to John Wills & Gerry Pope.

The post G. P. Electronics Harmonic Generator appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

‘Park’ was a brand that was launched by Marshall during the mid-1960s, and along with a range of amplifiers, Park also sold its own fuzz box. In the same way that Marshall was initially supplied with fuzz boxes by Sola Sound, the Park Fuzz Sound was also a rebranded Sola Sound product.

The known surviving Fuzz Sounds were built during a period spanning approximately from the late 1960s until the mid-1970s. These pedals featured the same type of enclosures that Sola Sound were already using for pedals like the Vox Tone Bender MKIII, and later, the Sola Sound Tone Bender MKIV. This version of the Park Fuzz Sound also featured identical electronics to the other fuzz boxes that Sola Sound was building at the time, with a circuit topology that was originally used in the Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround.

The exact year that the Park Fuzz Sound was first released is currently unknown. Gary Hurst recalled his own designs having been rebranded for a number of companies, which included Park,¹⁴ and so it remains a distinct possibility that earlier versions of the Park Fuzz Sound were built prior to the extant pedals with the ‘MKIII’ circuit.

Park Fuzz Sound ‘MKIII’, c. late 1960s

During the late 1960s, Park Fuzz Sound pedals came with Tone Bender MKIII circuits, housed in ‘MKIII’-type enclosures. Unlike the version of the MKIII that Sola Sound was supplying to Vox and Rotosound, the very earliest of these ‘MKIII’ Fuzz Sounds were fitted with only two control knobs. The basic circuit & construction of these pedals was identical to the Tone Bender MKIII, but the amount of ‘fuzz’ was fixed at maximum, and the remaining two controls varied the volume & tone of the effect. Confusingly, the tone control on these two-knob Park Fuzz Sounds, with MKIII circuits, was misprinted as ‘fuzz’. (Photo credit: J. Roth/Jermsfuzz)

Park Fuzz Sound ‘MKIII’, c. late 1960s/early 1970s

Other examples of the ‘MKIII’ Park Fuzz Sound, dating approximately to the late 1960s/early 1970s, were built with the more conventional three-knob arrangement. These pedals were identical to the three-knob Tone Benders that Sola Sound was also manufacturing for companies like Vox & Rotosound at the same time. (Photo credit: Root Two Amplification)

Park Fuzz Sound ‘MKIV’, c. early-to-mid-1970s

By the early 1970s, the Park Fuzz Sound was being manufactured in the same type of pressed steel enclosure that Sola Sound was using for their Tone Bender MKIV. Date codes in surviving pedals confirm that the Park Fuzz Sound would continue to be built like this until the mid-1970s. (Photo credit: S. Castledine)

Mike Oldfield was photographed (below) using several Park Fuzz Sound pedals of this sort, and the model can also be seen & heard on Oldfield’s 1973 BBC performance of ‘Tubular Bells.’

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Park Fuzz Sound appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Sola Sound released the Tone Bender MKIV, approximately during the year of 1970, during which the model was regularly advertised in Beat Instrumental & Melody Maker publications. At the time, the only thing that set the MKIV apart from the Tone Bender MKIII that they were already producing for Vox, was the fact that the MKIV came in a slightly different enclosure, and that the model was printed with different graphics.

In the same way that Sola Sound were manufacturing their Tone Benders [MK1.5, Professional MKII & MKIII] under different names throughout the mid-to-late 1960s, the MKIV was also supplied to various different companies during the 1970s. The circuits & enclosures that Sola Sound were using in the early-to-mid-1970s for their own ‘Sola Sound Tone Bender’ were identical to the ones built for companies like Carlsbro and Park.

Tone Bender MKIV, “bendy” logo

The earliest versions of the Tone Bender MKIV were formally branded as ‘Sola Sound Tone Bender Mark IV’ pedals, and were housed in grey, pressed steel enclosures. To help to differentiate these early Tone Bender MKIV pedals from later examples, collectors have in recent years began informally referring to them as having “bendy” or “spaghetti” graphics (referring to the way that the ‘Tone Bender’ lettering has been stylised).

Slightly later examples featured the same graphic design, but came in both yellow and in orange colour schemes instead. The Tone Benders in these yellow and orange enclosures disproportionately resurface in central Europe, despite having been built in Britain. This is indicative of Sola Sound’s distribution model at the time. (Photo credit: S. Castledine, W. Merkel & eBay.com)

Tone Bender MKIV, “Batman” logo

By approximately 1971 (according to date codes on surviving examples), Sola Sound had redesigned the artwork on this model and begun production of one of the most recognisable versions of all of the Tone Benders. The model designation of the Tone Bender MKIV was removed, and Sola Sound’s fuzz box was once again, known simply as the ‘Sola Sound Tone Bender’. Internally, however, the circuits of these newer pedals remained unchanged.

Collectors in recent times have begun informally describing this version of the Tone Bender MKIV as being the version with the “Batman” logo, referring to the cartoonish stylisation of the ‘FUZZ‘ logo. Early pedals with this design scheme were printed with red & black ink, onto yellow enclosures. Sola Sound soon settled on a grey colour scheme, and this was how the Tone Bender would appear until the late 1970s.

Tech specs

The Tone Bender MKIV gradually evolved over the course of production, and this is reflected by the change in the electronic parts that were used, and in the overall construction of the circuits. The images above demonstrate the changes in the MKIV’s circuitry over the course of the 1970s. (Photo credit: S. Castledine & Crave Guitars)

MKIV’s built during the first half of the 1970s featured a three-transistor circuit that was loosely based on the Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround. By the late 1970s, the grey Tone Benders with the “Batman” logo were being built with a silicon-transistor fuzz circuit, loosely based on the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi. Sola Sound’s development of the circuits inside Tone Bender MKIV pedals is mirrored by the development of the same circuits in the Tone Bender MKIII, which still being supplied to Vox, in parallel with these pedals.

The Tone Bender MKIV was finally discontinued in the late 1970s.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Sola Sound Tone Bender MKIV appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Introduced in 1968, the Tone Bender MKIII was the latest incarnation of the series of Tone Benders that Sola Sound had been supplying to Vox (among other brands) since 1966. By the time that Sola Sound were producing the MKIII, their fuzz boxes were no longer being built into cast aluminium enclosures, and instead, the MKIII appeared in a pressed steel casing. These newer enclosures were painted in a dark grey hammertone finish, and were printed with a far livelier and attractive set of silk-screened graphics.

Sola Sound continued to supply Vox with the Tone Bender MKIII until well into the 1970s, with the fuzz circuit undergoing various further changes over the years. Pedals that are formally labelled as ‘Vox Tone Bender MKIII’ could have been built with any one of at least three entirely different fuzz circuits, and the only way to recognise the specific type of MKIII is by inspecting a pedal’s cosmetic features and/or the electronics inside.

Tone Bender MKIII ‘with treble ‘n’ bass boost’

Some of the earliest Vox Tone Bender MKIII fuzz boxes were built with a silicon transistor circuit, and featured only two control knobs. These Tone Benders, ‘with treble ‘n’ bass boost’, were in production by August of 1968, when a Tone Bender MKIII with only two controls was demonstrated at the British Musical Instrument Industries trade fair at the Russell Hotel in London.¹⁵ (Photo credit: J. Bagwell)

The electronic circuit in these pedals is unlike any other fuzz box design known thus far. The two controls allow for the user to vary the volume and the tone of the fuzz sound, and what makes this model particularly unusual is that the tone control continues to function even when the pedal is disengaged in the signal path.

Tone Bender MKIII pedals “plus Bass and Treble Boost” were still being advertised in the press by early 1969,¹⁶ but it is unknown how long exactly the model remained in production. The small number of surviving pedals suggests that the two-knob Tone Bender MKIII was only a relatively limited offering.

Tone Bender MKIII, germanium transistors

By the end of the 1960s, Sola Sound started building Tone Bender MKIII fuzz boxes with what would become one of their most successful circuit designs. This version of the Tone Bender MKIII featured a germanium transistor circuit that was loosely based on the earlier Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround. It came with adjustable controls for the volume, amount of fuzz, and tone of the effect. (Photo credit: S. Castledine)

The same germanium transistor circuit that Sola Sound built into these three-knob Vox Tone Benders, between the late 1960s through to approximately the mid-1970s, was also supplied to companies like Rotosound & Park for their own versions of the Tone Bender MKIII. Sola Sound also sold the Tone Bender MKIII under their own company’s brand name for a limited period of time, before developing their Tone Bender MKIV.

Tone Bender MKIII, ‘Hastings’ edition

For a short period of time in the early 1970s, the Vox Tone Bender MKIII was built into a cast aluminium version of the familiar ‘MKIII’ enclosure, instead of in Sola Sound’s pressed steel casings. These cast enclosure pedals featured the same germanium transistor fuzz circuit as Sola Sound’s pressed steel pedals, but they were fitted with stickers noting the address for the new factory set up for ‘Vox Sound Limited’ (VSL) in Hastings, Sussex. It’s likely that these pedals were manufactured ‘in-house’ by VSL, based on Sola Sound’s design, rather than by Sola Sound themselves. (Photo credit: A. Souleyman)

For more information about Vox Sound Ltd, please see the excellent Vox Supreme website.

Tone Bender MKIII, silicon transistors

The youngest of the Vox Tone Bender MKIII pedals featured a silicon transistor circuit, based around the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi design. These pedals were supplied to Vox by Sola Sound approximately during the mid-to-late 1970s, and were identical to Sola Sound’s own Colorsound Jumbo Tone Bender pedals. (Photo credit: Woody’s Gear World/Reverb.com)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Vox Tone Bender MKIII appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

David Sperrin worked initially as a welder fitter, before finding a job at Frank Hessy’s famous music store in Liverpool. David later moved onto building & selling his own musical electronic equipment, but continued working with Hessy, supplying the shop with amplifiers (some of which were rebranded as ‘Stag‘ products). A Sperrin amplifier is pictured below. (Photo credit: C. Aindow)

The Sperrin Fuzz Boxes were assembled by David Sperrin at the family home on Matlock Road, in conjunction David’s wife, Beryl, who posted the fuzz boxes to their customers. A description in the press of the model reveals it to have been a foot-operated pedal, with two basic control knobs with which to adjust the sound. No examples of the Sperrin Fuzz Box are known yet to have actually survived.

I would be delighted to hear from anybody with any further knowledge of David Sperrin or the Sperrin fuzz boxes. Photos of Sperrin equipment (fuzz boxes or otherwise) are greatly appreciated, and readers’ contributions can be submitted either via the form below, or by contacting me directly.

The post Sperrin Fuzz Box appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

The Shatterbox was an early ‘multi-effects’ fuzz box that combined the Hornby Skewes Treble Booster with the Zonk II. Featuring two foot switches, the Shatterbox offered users a choice of either the boost or fuzz effects, or a combination of both.

With the same construction style as the Wilsic Sound Fuzz, and because late-production Shatterboxes featured the same type of knobs (and also because Wilsic Sound was already supplying Hornby Skewes with Miles Platting amplifiers during the 1970s), it is likely that Charlie Ramskir was involved with the development of this fuzz box too. For more information about Ramskir’s relationship with Hornby Skewes, including the common misunderstanding about Charlie Ramskir’s premature death, please see the page for the Zonk Machine.

The Shatterbox was reportedly shown “for the first time” at the Frankfurt Musikmesse trade fair in the spring of 1969.^{17 18} As a result, the hand-written estimation of ‘1967’ (suggesting the year that the advertisement above was printed) is somewhat unreliable. Additionally, the earliest known surviving Shatterboxes all feature a selection of parts that is consistent with the products that Hornby Skewes was producing around the period of late 1968/early 1969.

It is certainly possible that the Shatterbox was developed earlier than 1969, but no such surviving example of a pedal is known to exist yet. Based on the date codes on the potentiometers of surviving Shatterboxes, we can ascertain that the model was still in production by the early 1970s.

The Shatterboxes were advertised in the British press, and clearly they were sold in Britain because many of the original units have resurfaced there. However, as with the Zonk Machines, the Shatterbox pedals have also been sighted in Canada. Two surviving original Shatterboxes have also been discovered in Finland, and one in Belgium, suggesting that Hornby Skewes also sold these pedals to various international markets.

One notable user of the Shatterbox was Marc Bolan, who was pictured in the 1970s with the model as part of his guitar effects signal chain. The distinctive sound of Bolan’s Shatterbox can be heard on various tracks from T. Rex’s 1970 self-titled album. (Photo credit unknown)

Stripboard (Veroboard) Shatterbox

Early Shatterboxes, as pictured above, featured circuits assembled on stripboard. These pedals featured the same sort of construction & parts selection as seen on the youngest of the Zonk Machine pedals, dating to the period of around late 1968/early 1969. (Photo credit: A. Karttu/Thunderbird)

Printed circuit board (PCB) Shatterbox

By the early 1970s, construction of the Hornby Skewes Shatterbox moved over to a printed circuit board. The printed graphics on the enclosures were also updated slightly between the stripboard and PCB eras.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to Jonny Saville of the Voxac100 website

The post John Hornby Skewes Shatterbox appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Overview

WEM was one of the first major companies in the UK to offer commercial fuzz boxes, and based on the number of surviving examples (and despite being a relatively crude-sounding two-transistor design) the WEM Rush Pep Box seems to have sold reasonably well between 1965 and 1967. By the late 1960s, however, WEM went on to offer a far more sophisticated fuzz box, in the form of the Project V.

The origins of the Project V may be found (at least conceptually) in the WEM ‘Fifth man’ guitar. The ‘Fifth man’ was advertised in a 1967 Bell catalogue, and it featured similar controls for the ‘drive’ and ‘edge’ of its Project IV effect. Whether the electronic circuit of the Project V fuzz box is similar to that in the ‘Fifth man’s’ Project IV feature is unknown.

Early examples of the Project V date to 1968, but date codes on parts inside pedals alone aren’t sufficient for ascertaining when production began, because the Project V was not advertised until the following year. Most surviving examples feature potentiometers dating to 1969. Pictured above are a pair of early advertisements for the WEM Project V printed in 1969.

Tech specs

The circuitry of the WEM Project V was built onto an aluminium bracket, and this was then screwed onto a larger wooden surface where the footswitch and battery contacts were mounted. A rectangular frame made out of folded aluminium was fitted across the face of the pedal, which covered the exposed wooden sides. The red removable bottom cover was made out of folded steel.

In addition to the typical controls of a fuzz box (for the output volume of the pedal, as well as the amount of fuzz produced) the Project V featured ‘drive’ and ‘edge’ toggle switches for brighter and darker flavours of the fuzz effect . The Project V also included two internal trim pots for further adjustment.

The Project V’s circuit featured 8 silicon transistors and an inductor, and was far more sophisticated in its design than most fuzz boxes from the 1960s. Part of the schematic is based off a textbook quasi-complementary amplifier.

Individual battery contacts and a pair of slim Terry clips were screwed into the underside of the wooden frame of the pedal. According to the testimonies from two original owners of Project V pedals, these units were powered by a single cylindrical 8.4 volt battery (offered at the time by Mallory and also by Eveready). A suitable modern substitution is the Excell A136 battery, but connectors for modern 9 volt batteries can also safely be fitted to Project V battery contacts.

Earlier Project V pedals (pictured above-left) came with printed ‘in’ and ‘out’ labels for the jack sockets, while later ones were fitted with green washers to tell them apart.

Different versions

Many Project V fuzz boxes were crudely numbered with felt-tip pen on the inside of the bottom plate. These numbers correlate with changes in construction and parts selection, and this enables us to arrange surviving Project V’s into a chronological sequence. It is unknown how many Project V pedals were produced in total, but a selection of the different versions is pictured in this section.

PW0046

This pedal is likely the earliest known surviving Project V thus far. The red bottom cover has a removable battery hatch close to the jack sockets (upon which the serial number has been written). This was a remnant of the discontinued WEM Rush Pep Box pedals, which were powered by conventional 9 volt (PP3) batteries that sat behind that removable hatch. The Project V had a very different internal layout to the Pep Box, and there was obviously no room for a battery behind the jack sockets. Later Project V pedals omitted that removable battery hatch.

Another distinctly ‘early’ feature, as seen on this pedal, is the use of circular control knobs. These knobs were eventually phased out on the Project V (along with other WEM products in the late 60s) in place of knobs with a protruding pointer.

These early Project V’s had an additional wooden block positioned between the battery contacts and the footswitch & circuitry. A small channel was cut out of the block through which the power wires travelled. WEM appeared to have phased out the use of that additional block particularly early on during production, as it is a very rare feature to see.

The Project V pictured above is also a very early example, with all of the same features as #46 pictured previously. Unfortunately this pedal has lost its serial number over time, but it’s likely to have been built fractionally later, due to the presence of the same polystyrene film capacitor connecting the signal from the volume pot to the edge switch. Project V #46 uses a tropical fish capacitor in that position, which hasn’t yet been sighted in any other exemplar. (Photo credit: R. Dingli)

The potentiometer date codes in both pedals are ‘B8’ (February 1968).

78

The gallery of photos here is actually of two separate (but identical) pedals. Both pedals have early features, such as the obsolete battery hatch and the circular control knobs. They have the same ‘B8’ stamped Allen-Bradley volume potentiometer, but for some reason WEM fitted a Morganite pot for the attack control instead. The Morganite pot is dated the 36th week of 1968. (Photo credits: Vintage & Rare, C. Clements)

By the time that these two pedals were built, WEM had stopped fitting the divider block of wood between battery & circuitry. The schematic was also modified very slightly to include a small pull-down polystyrene capacitor, which was crudely connected between the trim pots on the parts-side of the PCB.

The first pedal above bears the serial number 78. The second pedal’s number is sadly unknown.

#103

Project V #103 marks a number of design changes in the sequence. The circular knobs fitted to earlier Project V’s were updated to a new style with protruding pointers, and these would have been a lot easier to see and set in low-light environments.

By the time that this pedal was built, WEM had also updated the red bottom plates to omit the unused Pep Box-era battery hatch. Potentiometer date codes on #103 are ‘C9’ (March 1969).

#103 is also the earliest Project V pedal to have been seen with the green washer denoting the input jack socket, instead of printed ‘in’ and ‘out’ labels.

128

At the time of writing, #128 is a unique Project V. Unsurprisingly, it is almost identical to #103 (pictured previously) — the same mixture of resistors and the same ‘C9’ potentiometer date codes. This pedal has one critical difference, however, and it is that the circuit board has been assembled using BC149B transistors in place of the BC108B transistors used for both earlier and later Project V’s. It isn’t known at this point whether the original transistors in this pedal were replaced at one point, or whether these BC149B’s may have been very briefly used at the factory. (Photo credit: Y. Asai)

983

There is a big jump in the sequence of numbered Project V pedals from the 100s to the 900s. A cluster of Project V’s with serial numbers in the 900s have resurfaced over the years, and they all have identical components to the exemplar pictured here. Given how rare the WEM Project V pedals are, it is very difficult to imagine that WEM could have built anywhere close to the region of a thousand units, and we may need to wait for more information or pedals to surface in order to get a better understanding of WEM’s numbering system.

Project V’s with these later serial numbers also have the latest known potentiometer date codes: D9 and J9 (April & October 1969, respectively).

Eno’s fuzz

Two well-known users of the Project V include Paul Rudolph, of Deviants & Pink Fairies fame, as well as Brian Eno. Rudolph confirmed via private correspondence that it was in fact his WEM Project V that was either loaned to Eno, or left behind at the studio, following the Here come the warm jets sessions.¹⁹

Pictured is Paul Rudolph, performing with the Deviants at the Hyde Park Free Concert on September 20th, 1969, with a WEM Project V at his feet. This is the exact pedal that Brian Eno would go on to describe using for some of his guitar treatments during the 1970s.²⁰ (Photo credit unknown)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to the P. Beard, S. Castledine, M. Keeble, H. Barclay, the WEM Owners Club [https://www.wem-owners.com] & Paul Rudolph

The post WEM Project V appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

The Zonk II was a fuzz box that Hornby Skewes offered alongside the ZZ.1 ‘Zonk Machine’ during the period of approximately 1967 through to the early 1970s. An early advertisement (crudely dated ‘1967’ by its owner) describes the Zonk II as a “good quality Fuzz Box at a reasonable price”, and indeed, the Zonk II was priced considerably lower than the Zonk Machine.

The circuit inside Zonk II pedals evolved over the course of production. Zonk II pedals were initially built with various two and three-transistor circuits, using germanium transistors. By the 1970s, the Zonk II pedals featured a two-transistor circuit, using silicon transistors. Close inspection of surviving pedals reveals that the reason for the multitude of different versions of the same model came as a result of Hornby Skewes having outsourced the manufacturing of the Zonk II to several different builders.

Different versions

Unusual early Zonk II’s, c. 1967

Early versions of the Zonk II were housed in heavy-duty cast aluminium enclosures. These enclosures featured the same distinctive angular design, with tapered sides, as the early Marshall SupaFuzz pedals. Anecdotal evidence confirmed that this was not a coincidence, and that some early Zonk II fuzz boxes were in fact supplied to Hornby Skewes by Sola Sound, as the OEM.²¹

The pedals pictured above were likely both built in around 1967. The pedal on the left features a three-transistor circuit, which may be derivative of Hornby Skewes’ Zonk Machine; while the unit on the right was built with a germanium two-transistor fuzz circuit. Both pedals are, at time of writing, the only known surviving examples of their circuit type. (Photo credit: G. Green & J. Light)

Zonk II “Professional MKII”, c. 1968

Other early Zonk II’s were built by Sola Sound with identical sets of Tone Bender MKII electronics to the fuzz boxes that Sola Sound was already offering to companies like Marshall, Vox & Rotosound. The transistor configuration and the exact selection of parts reveals that the handful of known surviving Zonk II “MKII” fuzz boxes were not built before 1968. The pedal pictured above even has a date stamp on its bottom plate that supports this. (Photo credit: R. Green)

Zonk II (cast enclosure, with silicon transistors), c. 1969

Date codes stamped on the pots in the Zonk II pictured here reveal that these pedals were still being housed in their angular cast aluminium enclosures by 1969. Despite the fact that the angular enclosures were likely a Sola Sound design, the electronics in this 1969 version of the Zonk II circuit were actually assembled by a different company.

This latest revision of the Zonk II circuit featured two 2N4061 silicon transistors, and was built on stripboard. This silicon-transistor circuit was the circuit that would be used for the Zonk II until the model was finally discontinued during the 1970s. The selection of components & hardware, along with the general construction style, strongly indicates that these silicon-transistor stripboard Zonk II pedals were built by the same people who were already building Zonk Machines (and the various assorted other effects units) for Hornby Skewes. 

Interestingly, these ‘transitional’ Zonk II’s (i.e. those built with silicon transistors, but housed in the earlier cast aluminium enclosure) have thus far only resurfaced in Italy.

Zonk II (folded aluminium enclosures), 1969-c. 1970s

By the early 1970s, the Zonk II transitioned from being housed in the distinctive cast aluminium enclosures, to a flimsier type of folded aluminium enclosure (similar to what was already being used for the Zonk Machine). The electronic circuits inside these newer casings initially remained unchanged, but construction on stripboard eventually changed over to a dedicated printed circuit board. (Photo credit: C. Nelson)

Branding on the track side of these PCBs reveals that the pedals were built for Hornby Skewes by Charlie Ramskir’s Wilsic Sound. Ramskir was already supplying Hornby Skewes with [Miles Platting] amplifiers during the 1970s, and Skewes recalled in a 2015 interview that Ramskir was involved with the production of Hornby Skewes fuzz boxes too.²² Wilsic Sound also offered a fuzz box under its own brand as well, which was visually very similar to the 1970s-era Zonk II. 

The two-transistor circuit of the Zonk II would also feature as part of the more sophisticated Hornby Skewes Shatterbox pedal, which was built & sold concurrently, during the late 1960s through to the early 1970s. The Zonk II was finally discontinued at some point in the early-to-mid-1970s, having been replaced with a different range of effects pedals, supplied to Skewes by JEN in Italy.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post John Hornby Skewes Zonk II appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

History

Origins

These early Tone Benders were built with a three-transistor fuzz circuit, based on Gibson’s 1962 Maestro Fuzz-Tone. The Maestro Fuzz-Tone was an American product, and was predominantly sold in the United States, where the majority of surviving examples resurface nowadays. Nevertheless, the Gibson fuzz boxes found their way into the hands of several notable British guitarists, and the circulation of those primitive early American fuzz boxes around the London music scene can at least be partially explained by the fact that the Selmer shop on Charing Cross Road was importing them.²³

During the early 1960s, Gary Hurst worked as a repairman and engineer for Vox. Hurst recalled initially commuting from London to the Jennings “laboratories” in Dartford, where he worked briefly with Dick Denney, and that, slightly later, Tom Jennings set him up with his own dedicated space close to the (then-)Jennings shop at 100 Charing Cross Road. The exact dates of these events are unclear, but at some point Hurst stopped working for Vox, and spent several months working on Organs for Elka in Italy.²⁴ In one version of events, as recalled by Gary, it was confirmed that he worked in London’s West End in 1964.²⁵ By 1965, Gary was back in London, and was working out of the back of Larry Macari’s new Musical Exchange shop on 22 Denmark Street. This is where and when the Tone Bender was born.

This sequence of events is rather complicated, and took place at various different locations that were all mere minutes away from each other. The map below shows how close Macari’s Musical Exchange, Tom Jennings’ Vox shop, and the location of Gary Hurst’s workshop all were to one another.

Mistaken identities

Over the years, Gary Hurst has consistently recalled the story about a day at work, when he was approached by an eminent session musician, dissatisfied with his Maestro Fuzz-Tone, and who asked Gary whether he could improve the pedal. Gary agreed, but ended up supplying his customer with a brand new fuzz box instead of their Fuzz-Tone, which to this day, Gary still owns.²⁶

These events certainly took place before 1965, because Gary Hurst was reported to have begun developing his fuzz box as early as in mid-1964,²⁷, and that development was put on hold until April of the following year, after Hurst had returned to London following the aforementioned period of working for Elka in Italy.²⁸ Gary recalled having an awareness of fuzz guitar effects prior to his encounter with the session guitarist & their Maestro Fuzz-Tone, making reference to a P.J. Proby recording.²⁹

The identity of the session guitarist who approached Gary Hurst with a Maestro Fuzz-Tone is a contentious subject. Hurst has long maintained that it was Vic Flick (famously responsible for the lead guitar motif on ‘James Bond Theme’) who enquired about having his Fuzz-Tone modified, and who was subsequently supplied with the very first Tone Bender. Vic Flick, however, has on several occasions in recent years, denied any involvement or association with Gary Hurst and the Tone Bender.³⁰ Flick recalled visiting Macari’s Musical Exchange during the 1960s, and speaking with somebody there about how his Maestro Fuzz-Tone “didn’t cut it”, but explicitly maintained his position that he had no connection with Gary Hurst. Flick also condemned Music Ground (a manufacturer of modern fuzz boxes under the ‘JMI’ and ‘British Pedal Company’ brands) for using his name in their advertising. Vic Flick went as far to point out that he still owned his original Maestro Fuzz-Tone, which is pictured in his autobiography, ‘Vic Flick, Guitarman’.³¹

A telephone interview conducted in 2009 revealed the possibility of a different session guitarist having brought a Maestro Fuzz-Tone to Gary Hurst. “Big Jim” Sullivan was among the very earliest adopters of the fuzz sound in England, having recorded with a Maestro Fuzz-Tone on P.J. Proby’s ‘Hold me’ in 1964. Sullivan reportedly described in detail having loaned his Maestro Fuzz-Tone to Hurst (who, according to Sullivan’s recollection, was then working at the Vox shop), never seeing it again, and instead being presented with a wooden fuzz box.³²

The complete story behind the Tone Bender’s conception will never be known, but most of the details from Gary Hurst’s own accounts were eventually corroborated by Big Jim Sullivan’s testimony. Vic Flick may have been a victim of mistaken identity over the decades, and there is now a strong case suggesting that it was actually Big Jim Sullivan whose Maestro Fuzz-Tone inspired the now-famous Tone Bender pedals.

Macari muscle

By the summer of 1965, Gary Hurst’s Tone Bender was already being marketed and promoted by Macari’s Musical Exchange. This is evidenced by the significant coverage that the ‘MKI’ received in the September 1965 issue of Beat Instrumental, including a full page advertisement for the model. Beat Instrumental also ran a promotional competition for the Tone Bender ‘MKI’ in the September 1965 issue. Of the six pedals that were given away, at least one is known to still survive, and it was recovered in recent years by the Macari family.

The Gary Hurst/Sola Sound Tone Bender ‘MKI’ continued to be advertised regularly in the Beat Instrumental & Melody Maker publications during 1965.

These early Tone Benders were first & foremost a Sola Sound product, marketed & sold by Macari’s Musical Exchange. Recently uncovered anecdotal evidence from original owners of Tone Bender ‘MKI’ fuzz boxes has, however, opened up the possibility that they may have also been supplied to other music shops for distribution beyond Denmark Street. Shops where early Tone Benders are reported to have been purchased include Selmer’s on Charing Cross Road^{33 34} and Jim Moore’s in Hornchurch, Essex.³⁵ One ‘MKI’ user even reported acquiring their pedal from a shop as far away as in Newcastle.³⁶

The Macari’s archive holds logbooks, detailing the payments made to Gary Hurst in exchange for his fuzz boxes, which reveal that production of the ‘MKI’ version continued at least into December of 1965. This model would, however, soon be replaced by one that was perhaps cheaper and easier to mass-produce.

Evolution of the ‘MKI’

Wooden Tone Benders

Gary Hurst’s earliest Tone Benders were built into wooden enclosures. By Gary’s own admission, he didn’t keep an exact count of how many of these wooden pedals were made. Gary estimated that he and his brother built 10 pedals a day, for a period of roughly 10 days, before the casing had to be redesigned to make it easier to meet the huge demand.³⁷

Only a single wooden Tone Bender is known to have survived over the decades. This pedal, pictured above, remained in Gary Hurst’s possession for almost half a century, before being sold directly to a collector. The electronics inside this wooden Tone Bender were assembled on stripboard (also known as ‘Vero board’), and its circuitry boasts three black glass Mullard germanium transistors. (Photo credit: G. Green)

Hurst soon moved over to housing his Tone Benders into enclosures made of folded steel, presumably as part of an effort to scale up production. Hurst’s recollection of the wooden version of the Tone Bender having only been built for a very limited time is corroborated by a combination of the fact that Hurst only returned to London in April 1965, and that Jeff Beck was photographed already using the more sophisticated metal-bodied Tone Bender ‘MKI’ by the 4th of June 1965, during one of the Yardbirds’ appearances on ‘Ready Steady Go’.³⁸

Early metal-bodied Tone Benders

Exhibit A

The enclosures of these metal-bodied Tone Bender ‘MKI’ pedals came with a distinctive gold-painted top half and a dark grey base. Earlier examples of these metal Tone Benders, like the one pictured above, were primitively decorated with Letraset lettering for the model name & the relevant labels for the controls & jack sockets. These Letraset graphics were applied by the then-girlfriend of Gary Hurst (who was also the niece of Larry & Joe Macari), and who also coated the lettering with clear lacquer to protect it from rubbing away.³⁹

The Tone Bender above is unquestionably the earliest known surviving example of a metal-bodied Tone Bender ‘MKI’ thus far. It features Letraset lettering on the top half of the enclosure, as well as very crude hand-painted lettering denoting the jack sockets at the back. Electronically, this ‘MKI’ features the same stripboard construction as sighted in the single extant wooden Tone Bender, complete with three unknown black glass Mullard transistors. The circuit board in this Tone Bender has been painted over, in what is very likely to have been a deliberate attempt to discourage or frustrate attempts by others to copy the design. (Photo credit: S. Castledine)

Incidentally, the white knobs on this pedal were determined to be original after a photograph surfaced of Mick Ronson performing in London, in 1972, with a very similar looking Tone Bender.

Exhibit B

The Tone Bender ‘MKI’ pictured here is also a relatively early model, judging by the selection of parts and the remains of its Letraset lettering. By the time this Tone Bender was built, however, Gary Hurst was no longer putting the ‘MKI’ circuits together on stripboard. Instead, the Tone Bender was now built using a point-to-point parts layout, on its own dedicated board. The majority of surviving Tone Bender ‘MKI’ pedals were built using this construction style.

This particular pedal has been well-known to collectors for over two decades. At one point, it was part of Phil Harris’ Harris Hire backline, and it was pictured in Dave Hunter’s 2004 book, ‘Guitar Effects Pedals: The Practical Handbook’, albeit incorrectly captioned as an “Arbiter Tone Bender”. (Photo credit: L. Cook)

Exhibit C

This Tone Bender is also an early ‘metal-bodied’ example. It shares a lot of similarities with the ‘ex-Harris Hire‘ unit pictured previously, but it’s notable for having a very unusual 4μF input capacitor and an Impex S3-1T transistor in the second position. These parts, along with the grey coupling capacitor on Q1’s emitter are the exact parts that were also used on some of the earliest Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’ pedals. It’s unclear whether this pedal started out with those unusual components, or whether it wound up back on Gary Hurst’s workbench very early on during its life to be reworked.

This unique ‘MKI’ originally belonged to famed luthier Bill Puplett, and was kindly sold to the Fuzzboxes.org project in 2025 by Bill’s family after he passed away.

Sola Sounds Limited

As development of the Tone Bender progressed, the ‘MKI’ started being marketed more professionally, and the practice of crude Letraset labels was replaced with a the printing of a cleaner set of silkscreened graphics. By this point, the ‘MKI’ also finally featured the Macaris’ Sola Sound brand name (in small print, below the ‘Level’ control). These features suggest that the Tone Bender pictured above is a relatively late-production example.

Despite the enclosure being in rather poor condition, this particular Tone Bender has miraculously retained all of its original parts inside. The battery connector was at some point, however, replaced, and the Bulgin ‘chicken head’ control knobs are also non-original (although they are consistent with the style of knobs that we would expect to see on a ‘MKI’ built at the time).

This particular pedal was sold in 2021 by musician & sound engineer Laurie “Lol” Beeching, who performed with it through the 1980s. Lol acquired the pedal from an enigmatic London-based guitarist known only as ‘Bonk’, who reputedly bought the pedal brand new in 1965, from Jim Moore’s music shop in Hornchurch, Essex.⁴⁰

‘Bonk’ played in the 1960s with a group called the Diddley Daddies. I would be grateful to hear from anybody that has any further knowledge of ‘Bonk’ or the group(s) in which he played.

“Goldie”

The Tone Bender ‘MKI’ pictured above is unusual in that it has been built into one of the earliest known examples of Sola Sound’s cast aluminium enclosure. The construction of the electronics is also unique (at the time of writing) in that the parts have been assembled on perforated circuit board, as opposed to on strip board, or point-to-point on a dedicated board.

Having been through various generations of repairs & restoration, it is uncertain whether the type of construction is original to the pedal, or indeed whether the electronics might originally have been housed in a conventional steel-bodied case and have been re-built to fit the cast model.

“Goldie” spent a significant portion of its life in Germany, with former owners including Hamburg-based producer (and musician) Jochen Petersen⁴¹ and session guitarist Frank Diez.⁴²

Notable users

Despite having been in production for less than a year, Gary Hurst’s Tone Bender was hugely successful. This is evidenced by the lengthy roster of artists and groups who at one point or another were sighted using the model.

The Fuzzboxes.org blog ↵ has a comprehensive and up-to-date list of celebrity sightings, ranging from the Beatles & Beck, through to some more unusual and international acts.

Reader appeal

At the time of writing, I have yet to see two 1965 Tone Bender ‘MKI’ fuzz boxes that are exactly alike. Photos of further surviving pedals are incredibly useful when examining the development of this famous model, and I would be grateful for any readers’ submissions.

Photos, as well as general comments & queries about the 1965 Tone Bender can be sent via the form below, and also by contacting me directly.

Thanks to D. Main, S. Castledine, P. Johnston, J. Logan, & G. Green

The post Gary Hurst Tone Bender ‘MKI’ appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Background

One of the lesser-known British Invasion-era fuzz boxes was the one that Sola Sound supplied to Dallas Music.²⁶ Dallas sold a range of amplifiers and accessories during the 1960s under the ‘Rangemaster’ name, of which the most famous is the Rangemaster Treble Booster. For a brief period, however, in 1966, a fuzz box was also sold under Dallas’ brand. This was branded as the Rangemaster Fuzzbug.

Fuzzbugs were built by Sola Sound, and fitted with the various different electronic circuits being developed by the company at the time. Anecdotal evidence from the original owner of a Rangemaster Fuzzbug reveals that some of the Fuzzbugs were actually sold alongside the Tone Bender, at Sola Sound’s own retail outlet, Macari’s Musical Exchange.²⁸ Judging by the very low number of surviving examples, these Rangemaster fuzz boxes were only built in relatively small numbers, and there has been no sighting yet of the model in any of Dallas’ catalogues or price lists from the time. It is unknown whether the Rangemaster Fuzzbug pedals were available via any other retail channels besides Sola Sound’s own Musical Exchange.

Myths & myth-busting

A common assumption about the Fuzzbug is that, because of its link with the Dallas company, and because it shares the same basic electronic circuit, it must have somehow been a direct inspiration for the famous [Dallas] Arbiter Fuzz Face. Due to the use of a 500kΩ volume pot in the Fuzz Face, however, we can ascertain that Arbiter’s pedal was quite certainly inspired by a version of the ‘MK1.5’ Tone Bender that predates the known surviving Fuzzbugs by a fair margin.

In addition to this, Dallas weren’t actually involved with the development of the Fuzz Face at all, because Dallas only formally merged with Arbiter in 1968,³⁷ which was two years after the Fuzz Face was developed.

There is also rumoured to have been a version of the Fuzzbug that wasn’t formally branded as a ‘Rangemaster’ pedal, and while there is a precedent for Sola Sound offering generic, unbranded, versions of their different fuzz boxes, no such Fuzzbug has resurfaced as of yet. The type of enclosures being used for these Fuzzbug pedals may have also been used for other early Sola Sound pedals that have yet to be discovered, but could very well exist.

Different versions

Blue, two-transistor Fuzzbug

In the same way that Sola Sound supplied fuzz boxes to companies such as Marshall, Vox & Rotosound, the Rangemaster Fuzzbug was also built with whatever type of fuzz circuit that Sola Sound happened to have had in production at the time.

The earliest known surviving version of the Fuzzbug, pictured above, features a two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ Tone Bender circuit. Date codes on the potentiometers of this pedal prove that it wasn’t built before May 1966. (Photo credit: D. Main)

Blue, three-transistor Fuzzbug

Other surviving Fuzzbugs were built with the Tone Bender Professional MKII circuit, and these pedals can be dated to the period of mid-to-late 1966 (and possibly even into 1967). The pedal pictured above comes in the same hammered blue finish as the earlier two-transistor model, but it boasts a very early version of the superior three-transistor Tone Bender MKII. (Photo credit: M. Honen)

Grey, three-transistor Fuzzbug

The youngest known Fuzzbug discovered thus far was originally painted in the same hammered grey finish that Sola Sound was also using for their contemporaneous Marshall SupaFuzz pedals. Unsurprisingly, the selection of parts assembled on the Tone Bender MKII circuit board in this Fuzzbug is also identical to those used on SupaFuzz pedals built during the period of approximately late 1966 to early 1967.

This Fuzzbug is particularly unusual, however, in that it appears to have been originally designed & fitted with a hardwired/fixed input cable, as opposed to with a jack socket for a removable guitar lead. Fitting hardwired cables was a fairly common practice by manufacturers during the early development of fuzz boxes, but this is to date the only known instance of a fixed cable having been used on a Sola Sound pedal. (Photo credit: Music Ground)

Author’s note: I’ve never managed to track down an original Fuzzbug for my own collection, so if anybody reading this happens to own one of these obscurities, and might be daft enough to sell it, then please do get in touch.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Rangemaster Fuzzbug appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

One of the most well-known versions of the Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII is the one that was supplied, by Sola Sound (via Macari’s Musical Exchange), to Vox. According to original owners’ testimonies, Vox was already selling Sola Sound-built Tone Bender [‘MK1.5’] fuzz boxes by early 1966, but these pedals weren’t formally branded as Vox products yet.

By early 1967, Sola Sound had suspended (or at least scaled down) printing their own brand name on the Tone Bender Professional MKII, and they started branding the pedals as Vox Tone Bender Professional MKII’s instead. It’s possible (but unconfirmed) that this is connected to the Macaris’ takeover of the Jennings/Vox shop at 100 Charing Cross Road, which was also reported in early 1967.⁴⁰ This transition from Sola Sound to Vox was purely a branding/business decision, however, and the Tone Bender MKII remained functionally the same.

Compared with the Sola Sound pedals from 1966, the Vox Tone Bender Professional MKII pedals were painted in silver Hammerite, and instead of Bulgin ‘chicken head’ knobs, these pedals now featured tall silver-topped knobs (similar to the current Cliff K5 knob). Those silver-topped knobs were the same style that Sola Sound would continue to use on all of their effects pedals (including the Colorsound range) until well into the 1970s.

The above statement shows Vox confirming an order of 100 Tone Benders from Sola Sound. The agreement to supply Vox with their own, formally-branded, Vox Tone Bender MKII lasted from approximately early 1967 until mid-1968, and based on the relatively high number of surviving examples, it is likely that many orders like this one were filled for Vox, and that many hundreds of Vox Tone Bender MKII’s were built.

The Tone Bender MKII was finally discontinued in 1968, but Sola Sound’s partnership with Vox did not end there. The demise of the MKII resulted in Sola Sound’s invention of the Vox Tone Bender MKIII, and the agreement for Sola Sound to manufacture fuzz boxes for Vox lasted until the late 1970s.

Early version, c. 1967

Initially, the Vox-branded Tone Bender MKII pedals were screened with the same graphics as the earlier Sola Sound units. To reflect the change in branding, however, the ‘Sola Sound’ name was crudely obscured from the face of the pedal with a black bar, and replaced with ‘Vox’. Examples of this early version of the Vox Tone Bender MKII have been sighted with triplets of either Mullard OC75 transistors, or triplets of Impex S3-1T transistors. (Photo credit: M. Seppi)

Date codes stamped on parts of surviving early Vox MKII’s like this one reveal that the known sample of surviving pedals weren’t built until after the Macaris’ takeover of the old Jennings/Vox shop on 100 Charing Cross Road, reported in 1967.

Later versions, 1967-1968

The graphics were quickly redesigned, and the ‘Vox’ logo became much more prominent on the face of the company’s flagship fuzz box. The circuitry inside the Vox Tone Bender MKII remained largely unchanged, although the choice of resistors and capacitors was gradually updated over the course of production.

Earlier examples of this version of the Vox MKII featured a triplet of Mullard OC75 transistors, while late-production examples, dating to 1968, came with Mullard OC81D transistors. Earlier examples were built with slightly larger value input & output capacitors; and the very last of the Vox MKII’s were built without an input capacitor at all.

These ways in which the circuits inside Vox Tone Bender MKII pedals evolved over the course of production are an insight into Sola Sound’s wider development of their Tone Bender design. The shift from OC75 to OC81D transistors, for example, is something that can also be observed in the MKII Tone Benders that Sola Sound were supplying to Marshall and to Rotosound, at the same time as these Vox-branded pedals.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Vox Tone Bender Professional MKII appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

History

Marshall was one of a handful of companies with whom Sola Sound had agreements in place to build fuzz boxes. Early SupaFuzz pedals were supplied to Marshall by Sola Sound, and these were being built & sold at roughly the same time that Sola Sound had also begun to mass-produce their famous Tone Benders in 1966. Marshall’s dealings with Sola Sound would continue until 1968, at which point Marshall went on to begin manufacturing the SupaFuzz themselves.

The SupaFuzzes that were built by Sola Sound can be recognised by their more angular enclosure, with sharper edges than Marshall’s version. According to Gary Hurst, the sloping sides of the early SupaFuzz were inspired by the enclosures of Olivetti adding machines that he’d seen in Italy.¹

Beat Instrumental reported the SupaFuzz as “brand new” in February 1967, but the unit had evidently been available for quite some time already, as Jeff Beck was filmed with one in October of 1966, for the Yardbirds’ scene in the 1966 film, ‘Blow-up’.⁴³

The earliest SupaFuzzes can be identified by the fact that the ‘volume’ & ‘filter’ controls are positioned slightly closer together, towards the centre of the face of the pedal. Early SupaFuzzes (manufactured by Sola Sound) also came equipped with gold-topped control knobs, as used by Marshall on their own amplifiers.

At some point, in 1966, Sola Sound updated the cast enclosures for the various different fuzz boxes that they were manufacturing, and the updated version of the SupaFuzz enclosure (c. late 1966) featured the two controls in their more familiar position.

It is the earlier version of the SupaFuzz that would be pictured in many of Marshall’s 1960s-era catalogues and advertisements, despite having only been in production for a relatively short period of time.

1966: ‘SupaFuzz MKI’

A popular talking point about the Marshall SupaFuzz is that, throughout both Sola Sound’s and also Marshall’s periods of producing the fuzz box, the control labelled ‘filter’ is actually a misnomer. Typical SupaFuzzes built by Sola Sound between 1966 and 1968, and also by Marshall, from 1968 until the mid-1970s, feature a three-transistor Tone Bender MKII circuit. This means that the ‘filter’ control on those SupaFuzzes was the same as the ‘attack’ control on a Tone Bender MKII, rather than a tone filter.

The reason, however, that Sola Sound & Marshall printed the SupaFuzz with the misnomer of a ‘filter’ control was that for a very brief period in 1966, the SupaFuzz did in fact feature a filter control. Some of the earliest SupaFuzzes were built with a version of the Tone Bender ‘MKI’ circuit, with the amount of fuzz fixed at maximum, and the secondary control functioned as a basic tone filter to reduce the amount of treble content. This short-lived version of the Marshall SupaFuzz is nowadays dubbed by collectors as the ‘SupaFuzz MKI’

This early version of the SupaFuzz was initially described by collectors as a “prototype”, due to to the perceived scarcity of them. The ‘SupaFuzz MKI’ is, however, nowadays agreed to have been a standard production model (albeit for a rather limited time). At the time of writing, there are already a dozen known surviving examples of the ‘SupaFuzz MKI’.

The ‘SupaFuzz MKI’ was likely one of Gary Hurst’s designs. According to Hurst, its filter control was intended “to make [the SupaFuzz] different to the Tone Bender”.⁴⁴

Sola Sound’s and Marshall’s continued printing of the ‘filter’ label on their later versions of the SupaFuzz was purely an anachronism, which referred to this specific earlier version of the fuzz box.

1966: ‘Big M’ SupaFuzz

A number of very early SupaFuzzes, all of which having been built with this ‘SupaFuzz MKI’ circuit, were apparently sold in continental Europe. Interestingly, a significant number of those that have resurfaced there, have come with the ‘Marshall’ brand name either removed or masked off.

The pedal pictured above was unearthed in Germany, and is identical to the 1966 Marshall SupaFuzz ‘MKI’ pedals, other than that the Marshall brand has been removed or omitted from its enclosure. (Photo credit: S. Castledine)

These unbranded SupaFuzz pedals were likely to have been distributed in countries where Marshall didn’t have the authority to sell equipment under their own name. This was the case with the series of ‘Big M’ series of amplifiers that were built by Marshall, and sold internationally, and indeed, ‘Big M’ SupaFuzzes were listed in a Swedish catalogue.

Unbranded SupaFuzzes may have also been supplied to & distributed by companies other than Marshall, because a nondescript ‘SupaFuzz’ was also named in a German Vox price list.

‘Big M’ & unbranded SupaFuzz pedals, like the unit pictured above, were also pictured in several British advertisements and catalogues during the 1960s. A selection of these can be seen below.

1966-1968: Tone Bender MKII, and beyond

It wasn’t long into the production of the Marshall SupaFuzz that Sola Sound changed the circuit design of the model, and started building the pedals using the same circuit topology as the pedals they were already supplying to companies like Rotosound and Dallas. These SupaFuzzes were built with a completely different circuit to the earlier ‘SupaFuzz MKI’, but this newer circuit design became what is now understood to be the model’s ‘conventional’ circuit: the Tone Bender MKII.

It has been theorised that Marshall, themselves, perhaps may have preferred the sound of the Tone Bender MKII circuit over the earlier MKI circuit, but there is no evidence to substantiate this yet. The general timeline of the development of Sola Sound fuzz boxes in 1966 is also still somewhat murky, but it is distinctly possible that the ‘SupaFuzz MKI’ predated the development of the Tone Bender MKII circuit, and that once the MKII came about, it was simply convenient for the builder(s) to use the same circuitry for all of Sola Sound’s different fuzz boxes.

The change from the MKI circuit, in the SupaFuzz, to the MKII likely happened in 1966 (when Sola Sound were already advertising their own formally-branded version of the MKII in the press⁴⁵). This is because early SupaFuzz pedals with the Tone Bender MKII circuit featured a similar selection of parts as other early versions of the MKII circuit, and were also still built in the same sand cast enclosures as many of the ‘Supa MKI’ pedals, with the volume & “filter” knobs positioned closer together (as seen in the first of the three photos above). Marshall SupaFuzzes with the MKI & MKII circuits may have even been built by Sola Sound alongside each other for a brief period of time.

The earliest of the SupaFuzzes that came with Tone Bender MKII circuits (built in around 1966, with both ‘narrow’ and the conventional ‘wider’ knob placements) featured the gold-topped Marshall knobs. By 1967, however, Sola Sound were fitting SupaFuzzes with taller, silver-topped control knobs. These silver-topped knobs were the same style that Sola Sound would go onto use for their various other effects pedals (including the Colorsound range in the 1970s).

Sola Sound’s version of the Marshall SupaFuzz (with the Tone Bender MKII circuit) was built in relatively large quantities between 1966-1968, and over the course of that roughly two-year period, the selection of components used for their pedals gradually shifted. Early SupaFuzzes (with both MKI and MKII circuits) featured Mullard OC75 transistors; SupaFuzzes built in 1967 went through alternating periods of using Impex S3-1T & OC75 transistors; and the youngest of the Sola Sound-built Marshall SupaFuzzes, c. 1968, came with the now-illustrious Mullard OC81D transistors. Tone Benders built by Sola Sound during that period for other companies (such as Vox & Rotosound) followed similar patterns of changes in parts selection.

The last of the three images above shows a late-production (Sola Sound-built) Marshall SupaFuzz, built with the OC81D Tone Bender MKII circuit, which dates to 1968. By the time that this pedal was built, Sola Sound had apparently adjusted the kerning of the graphics, which resulted in the the ‘SupaFuzz’ lettering appearing more compact than on earlier editions of the pedal.

1968-c. 1973: The Marshall era

By August of 1968, Marshall had taken over production of the SupaFuzz from Sola Sound.⁴⁶ Their product, however, remained functionally the same. Marshall had their own cast aluminium enclosures manufactured, and these new cases had softer edges than the Olivetti-inspired Sola Sound version of the SupaFuzz, but were visually very much reminiscent of the original pedal. Marshall even started fitting their gold-topped control knobs to the SupaFuzz, once again.

Marshall’s own version of the SupaFuzz featured the same Tone Bender MKII circuit as the SupaFuzz that Sola Sound were previously supplying the company with. Unsurprisingly, as a result, Marshall’s pedal produced a very similar sound, despite being made by different people.

Date codes on surviving SupaFuzzes reveal that Marshall was still housing the circuits in the screen-printed enclosures until 1970. Both pedals pictured above were, according to date codes on potentiometers, not built until the 1970s.

At some point, in the early 1970s, Marshall updated the enclosures for the SupaFuzz. This newer version featured embossed lettering, as pictured, which replaced the black, printed text.

The electronic circuit remained the same, although at some point during this final phase of the SupaFuzz’s production, the design of the printed circuit board changed slightly, to accommodate the two potentiometers that were eventually being soldered directly to the board.

Date codes on the potentiometers of these ’embossed’ SupaFuzzes prove that the model was still in production by 1973. Contrary to what vintage pedal dealers & resellers often proclaim, the Marshall SupaFuzzes in the ’embossed lettering’ enclosure weren’t built until the 1970s.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Marshall SupaFuzz appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Rotosound was (and still is) a British manufacturer of musical instrument strings. The company was founded by James How during the 1950s, and it eventually became well known for its guitar & bass strings.

By the 1960s, Rotosound had also established a retail outlet on Denmark Street, which was where they sold their own products, as well as musical instruments & accessories branded for them.⁴⁶ During the period spanning from approximately the mid-1960s, through to the early 1970s, Rotosound also offered various different fuzz boxes.

Different versions

Rotosound Fuzz Box (cast metal housings), 1966-1968

Between 1966 and 1968, the Rotosound Fuzz Box was built into large cast aluminium enclosures. As pictured above, these pedals came equipped with two control knobs, and they were decorated with simple silk screened graphics. The Fuzz Boxes in the cast enclosures were actually supplied to Rotosound by Sola Sound, who were responsible for the circuit assembly. Because the shape & design are visually quite similar to the various other pedals being manufactured by Sola Sound in 1966 (e.g. the Tone Bender & Fuzzbug), we can assume that these housings were also designed & cast by the same people. Despite the fact that the pedals above all look more or less the same, they have actually all been built with noticeably different electronic circuits. (Photo credit: D. Main & J. Charles)

The earliest known Rotosound Fuzz Boxes in the cast metal enclosure were painted in a dark blue hammertone finish, and they date to 1966. These pedals feature Sola Sound’s two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ fuzz circuit, which was the same circuit that was more famously also used for Sola Sound’s unbranded ‘Tone Bender’ pedals. One surviving example of the blue Rotosound Fuzz Box has a faint stamp on the inside of its bottom plate, listing the Charing Cross Road address for Macari’s Musical Exchange, which suggests that this Rotosound-branded product may very well have been originally sold at Sola Sound’s own retail outlet.

Gold-painted Fuzz Box pedals appear to have followed the blue Rotosound pedals. These pedals can be dated approximately to late 1966, by the fact that gold Fuzz Boxes have been sighted with both late-production examples of the two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ fuzz circuit, as well as with a relatively early version of the Tone Bender Professional MKII circuit (which was Sola Sound’s succession to the earlier ‘MK1.5’ design). All of the known 1966-era Rotosound pedals (both gold & blue varieties) featured Mullard OC75 transistors.

Another version of Sola Sound’s Fuzz Box was being branded & supplied to Rotosound in 1968 (as ascertained by examining date codes on pedals, and by a wider understanding of the development of the Tone Bender MKII circuit). All of the silver Fuzz Boxes known to have survived thus far have been built with a particularly late version of the Tone Bender MKII circuit, and with a noticeably different selection of components to the earlier models, this time featuring Mullard OC81D transistors.

The reason why the Rotosound Fuzz Box has been sighted with a variety of significantly different circuits, despite having been built by the same company, is linked with our understanding of Sola Sound’s business model during the 1960s & 1970s. The pedals that Sola Sound manufactured for Rotosound came with the same circuits as those that the company was also supplying to other companies like Vox, Marshall & Dallas. Pictured above, are the near-identical internals of a 1966 unbranded Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’, and a 1966 Rotosound Fuzz Box.

The fact that the circuitry in these blue, gold & silver Fuzz Boxes varies is a result of the natural evolution of Sola Sound’s two & three-transistor fuzz circuits over the course of the almost 2-year period of production. The gradual change in circuitry & parts selection may have come about as a result of restocking parts supplies at the factory, or simply by design choices, but the same phenomenon can be observed in the development of the fuzz pedals that Sola Sound was supplying other companies with concurrently. A helpful way of looking at this is by considering that the type of Tone Bender fuzz circuit (e.g. ‘MKI’, ‘MK1.5’ or MKII) that Sola Sound built into enclosures of each model (i.e. SupaFuzz, Fuzz Box, Fuzzbug, or even ‘Tone Bender’) don’t necessarily correlate in any meaningful way other than that those circuits are what Sola Sound happened to have been building at the time.

Unbranded ‘Fuzz Box’ pedals, c. 1966

Joe Macari was photographed apparently showing a pair of unbranded ‘Fuzz Box’ pedals to an unknown group. These pedals were presumably painted in blue, and likely featured the two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ circuit, but this is unconfirmed. (Photo credit: Macari’s Musical Exchange/Sola Sound)

At the time of writing, only one example of an unbranded blue Fuzz Box is known to have survived. Other than the lack of any company’s branding printed to the pedal, this particular ‘Fuzz Box’ is identical to the blue Rotosound-branded pedal pictured earlier. The reason why the Rotosound name hasn’t been printed onto the enclosure is likely that Sola Sound was also supplying the same model to other businesses. Anecdotal evidence behind this particular example reveals that it was originally sold at a music shop in Ireland.

Rotosound Fuzz Box (pressed steel housings), 1968- c. 1970s

Sola Sound continued supplying Rotosound with fuzz boxes, but 1968 marked a shift in the construction & cosmetics of these pedals. Sola Sound had discontinued using cast aluminium casings for their growing range of fuzz pedals, and replacing these, was a more rounded enclosure, made out of pressed steel. (Photo credit: S. Castledine & D. Main)

As with previous versions of Sola Sound’s Rotosound Fuzz Box, these pedals in the pressed steel housings were built with a variety of different circuits over a number of years. Earlier versions of the pressed steel model can be identified by the fact that they came with only two control knobs. These pedals are particularly scarce, but have been sighted with various late production examples of the Tone Bender MKII circuit.

By 1969, the Rotosound Fuzz Boxes in the pressed steel housings featured the more conventionally seen three-knob setup. These three-knob Fuzz Boxes used the same Tone Bender MKIII circuit, which was ultimately Sola Sound’s fuzz circuit that replaced the MKII. These ‘MKIII’ Rotosound Fuzz Boxes were built with the same electronic circuits that Sola Sound was also supplying to companies like Vox & Park concurrently.

According to date codes in surviving pedals, it can be ascertained that Sola Sound continued manufacturing the Fuzz Box for Rotosound at least until the early 1970s.

Rotosound Fuzz (manufactured by Jennings), c. 1968-1969

For a brief period, starting in November 1968, the Rotosound formed a partnership with the newly founded Jennings company⁴⁷ and this resulted in some of the Jennings pedals being rebranded for Rotosound. This was probably a short-lived arrangement, and relatively few Rotosound-branded Jennings pedals were built, because there is only one exemplar that is known to have actually survived. The Rotosound Fuzz pictured above is identical to the more familiar Jennings Fuzz, apart from bearing a different brand name. (Photo credit: S. Castledine)

Other Rotosound-branded pedals were reported to have been built by Jennings at the time, including the wah-wah and the ‘Growler‘ (fuzz & wah) models. No examples of either are yet known to have survived.

Mystery ‘Rotosound’ pedal, unknown date

Pictured above is another Rotosound-branded fuzz box. The unit is housed in an enclosure that looks very similar in construction & dimensions to the John Hornby Skewes Zonk Machine but it is unknown at this time whether the two models are related at all. (Photo credit: G. Green)

Corrosion on the enclosure suggests that this Rotosound pedal was built from bent steel, which is unlike the Zonk Machines that were made from aluminium. Text on the battery cover reveals that the mysterious Rotosound pedal was built in Liverpool.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Rotosound Fuzz Box appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Sola Sound Limited was incorporated on November 3rd, 1964,⁴⁷ and served as the brand under which the Macari’s Musical Exchange chain of shops went on to sell its various electronic musical accessories. The Tone Bender MKII was a three-transistor fuzz circuit that was introduced by Sola Sound in 1966. The circuit closely resembles the earlier two-transistor Tone Bender, but the MKII has an extra transistor gain stage in front.

Sola Sound manufactured the Tone Bender MKII circuit for a number of different companies, as the OEM, during the period of 1966 to 1968. In the interest of clarity, however, this page focuses specifically on the pedal that was formally branded as the ‘Sola Sound Tone Bender Professional MKII’, as pictured.

Based on the date codes of surviving Sola Sound-branded Professional MKII’s (and of other closely related Sola Sound fuzz boxes), and also based on the timing of references in the press to the MKII, Sola Sound’s famous model was most likely developed at some point around mid-to-late 1966. The parts selection of surviving Tone Benders from 1966 suggests that the ‘MK1.5’ was discontinued around the same time that the earliest MKII’s were being built.

The gradual change in the mixture of electronic components in original Tone Bender MKII pedals reveals that Sola Sound significantly scaled down the use of their own company’s name on the branding of the model, following the introduction of the Vox Tone Bender Professional MKII. This may have coincided with the Macaris’ 1967 takeover of Vox’s retail outlet on 100 Charing Cross Road,⁴⁸ but that has not been confirmed yet. Some of the earliest known Vox-branded Tone Bender Professional MKII’s were in fact Sola Sound-branded pedals that had the Sola Sound name crudely obscured.

Sola Sound did continue to manufacture the MKII under their own name, alongside the various existing OEM supply chains, but based on the rarity of late-production Sola Sound-branded Tone Bender MKII pedals, this was certainly only done in relatively small numbers.

The various different versions of the Sola Sound-branded Tone Bender MKII are detailed below.

Different versions

The 1966 ‘MK1.5’ conversions/”short board” MKII

Close inspection of some Sola Sound-branded MKII’s reveals that the builder(s) actually modified existing ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders to the new three-transistor specifications. The graphics of the unbranded ‘Tone Bender’ enclosures were subsequently updated with extra details above the footswitch, denoting the Sola Sound brand & this new model.

These “short board” MKII’s retained almost all of the individual parts of the ‘MK1.5’ circuitry that the pedals started out with, but these parts were rearranged on the old piece of stripboard, to make space for the extra parts that were subsequently added in order to make it a MKII. (Photo credit: J. Logan)

1966-1968 conventional “large board” MKII

Other Sola Sound-branded MKII fuzz boxes were built from scratch, and featured the same circuit layout & parts selection that Sola Sound were already using for the Tone Benders they were supplying, as the OEM, to Marshall, Rotosound & Dallas.

This particular pedal has a relatively early selection of components, and dates approximately to late 1966/early 1967. The shade of grey paint on this “large board” (as it is sometimes described by collectors) MKII was also used for Marshall SupaFuzz pedals that were built at the same factory, at the same time, and using the same mixture of germanium transistors & parts. The Sola Sound-branded Tone Bender MKII, built with this “large board” was apparently built in relatively small numbers compared with the Vox & Marshall-branded MKII, until the Tone Bender MKII circuit was finally discontinued in 1968. (Photo credit: J. Roth)

1966 two-transistor MKII

This particular Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII is somewhat of an anomaly. The type of sandcast enclosure in which the pedal has been built, and the shade of grey of its paintwork, are both consistent with the 1966 ‘short board conversion’ MKII’s (as described earlier on this page). What makes this pedal unusual is that the circuit board has not actually been updated to the three-transistor specification of the Tone Bender MKII — this pedal is a two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ housed inside a ‘Sola Sound Professional MKII’ branded enclosure.

It’s possible that this is an example of a mistake having been made at the factory where the pedals were built, and that an engineer may have forgotten to update the pedal. It’s also possible that, upon testing the two-transistor circuitry at the factory, this pedal was determined to perform and sustain well enough not to warrant being modified. At present, we can only speculate as to the origins of this unusual Tone Bender MKII. (Photo credit: H. Barclay)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Sola Sound Tone Bender Professional MKII appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

History

The Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’ was an influential two-transistor fuzz box that was built by Sola Sound in the mid-1960s. The exact origins of the ‘MK1.5’ are still in dispute, and there is no consensus as to whether the model was conceived by Gary Hurst, by Dick Denney, or perhaps by somebody else altogether. It is also unknown whether the ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders were built by Gary Hurst (who had already been building the earlier ‘MKI’ Tone Bender for Sola Sound in 1965), or whether — considering the apparently large number of pedals built — Sola Sound might have subcontracted a local company for the job.

The ‘MK1.5’ was markedly different to the earlier Tone Bender ‘MKI’ in that it came in a cast aluminium enclosure, as opposed to the folded steel boxes. The general circuitry and construction was also a lot simpler than the three-transistor ‘MKI’, and the builder(s) would have been able to produce these pedals in much greater quantities compared with Gary Hurst’s time-consuming efforts with the ‘MKI’.

Early ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders date to 1965, which means that there is actually a possibility that it was being produced alongside Gary Hurst’s ‘MKI’ Tone Bender for a while. Date codes on the potentiometers of surviving pedals also prove that the ‘MK1.5’ was still in production by May of 1966.

According to witness accounts, the ‘MK1.5’ was being sold at a variety of different shops across the UK, including by Jennings in Dartford. These pedals were likely sold at Macari’s own chain of Musical Exchange shops in London, although there is no first-hand evidence to corroborate this yet.

Contrary to popular belief, the Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’s were actually manufactured in fairly large quantities, considering the relatively short period of time that the model was around for. Exact production numbers are sadly unknown, but vintage examples of the ‘MK1.5’ resurface fairly regularly, and with over 40 original pedals known to have survived thus far, they are more abundant than many of the fuzz boxes built by Sola Sound’s competitors during 1966.

Later in that year, Sola Sound would discontinue the ‘MK1.5’ Tone Bender, and offer a modified version of the same circuit under its own, as well as under other company’s brands, as the now-famous Tone Bender Professional MKII.

Nomenclature

The odd model designation for the ‘MK1.5’ refers to the way that this model sits, chronologically, in between the first version of the Tone Bender, known informally as the ‘MKI’, and the version that Sola Sound began to offer in late 1966, which was officially designated the Professional MKII.

A useful way of looking at this model is by considering it to be a transitional Tone Bender, built between the famous three-transistor ‘MKI’ and Professional MKII models.

As with the ‘MKI’, the ‘MK1.5’ moniker is one that was only applied to the two-transistor Tone Bender by collectors in modern times. Until Sola Sound released the Tone Bender Professional MKII, their pedals were all known simply as ‘Tone Benders’ (unless branded otherwise).

Tech specs

Compared with the earlier ‘MKI’ Tone Bender, there isn’t much to see inside an original example of a ‘MK1.5’. The small square of stripboard is populated with a ‘textbook’ negative-feedback amplifier circuit, typically with two Mullard OC75 germanium transistors (although some early ‘MK1.5’s’ were fitted with Impex S3-1T transistors instead).

During the early stages of the ‘MK1.5’s’ production, the pedals were fitted with a 500kΩ level potentiometer, as opposed to the typical 100kΩ pot that most schematics describe. The larger value level pot extends the lower frequency cut-off, and allows for a bassier fuzz sound. Because Arbiter’s Fuzz Face (released in late 1966) features almost identical parts values, including a 500kΩ level pot, it is very likely that Arbiter used an early ‘MK1.5’ for reference whilst designing their own fuzz box.

The similarities between these closely-related pedals can be seen on the diagram below.

Unusual variants

“Goldie MK1.5”

Some of the earliest ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders were housed in gold-painted enclosures, as opposed to the more commonly-seen grey hammertone. The circuitry inside this particular pedal is complete with numerous features consistent with an early-production example of the model, such as the 500kΩ level pot, and the ‘wafer’ style Arrow DPDT switch.

There are, at time of writing, only two other known surviving examples of Tone Benders built in this gold-painted cast enclosure (one of which having been fully rebuilt, with very little left of its original electronics; and the other boasting a Tone Bender ‘MKI’ circuit). This gold-painted ‘MK1.5’ surfaced in 2010, and despite selling for a staggering amount of money by public auction at the time, continued to change hands until settling in a private collection. With its two-transistor circuitry, the “Goldie MK1.5” is to this date still a unique example of a 1960s Tone Bender. (Photo credit: C. Nelson)

Impex transistors

Other two-transistor Tone Benders were built with a different selection of parts to the standard OC75-transistor pedals. The general circuit topology remained the same, but these pedals came with Impex S3-1T transistors instead of the Mullard types.

The Impex ‘MK1.5’ pictured above is a particularly early two-transistor Tone Bender, complete with a ‘wafer’ style Bulgin switch (which was also used briefly used for the Tone Bender ‘MKI’ pedals), and a cast enclosure with its inside painted.

Other versions of the Impex ‘MK1.5’ were housed in the more commonly-seen enclosures with ‘burst’-painted insides, and built with the same moulded Arrow DPDT switches that Sola Sound would continue to use on their fuzz boxes until the early 1970s.

Early Impex ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders were assembled with components dating to 1965, which leaves open the possibility that they may have been briefly built alongside the three-transistor ‘MKI’ model. The unusual selection of components (and type of shielded cabling) also suggests that the Impex-transistor pedals may have been built by a different person (or people), and perhaps at a different workstation. At this point, however, there is no concrete evidence yet to support any of these theories, nor to confidently place the position of the Impex ‘MK1.5’ in the timeline of the development of Sola Sound’s fuzz boxes. (Photo credit: S. Platt)

 

Unbranded Tone Bender MKII, c. 1967

Instinctively, one might assume that this particular Tone Bender — with its dark grey paintwork, and lack of any company branding — should feature a typical two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ circuit. The reason why this pedal is unusual is that it has actually been built with a three-transistor Tone Bender MKII circuit (although the third-position transistor has been (re-)soldered on the track-side of the circuit board).

Various theories have been proposed over the years about the origin & ‘intention’ of this pedal. It was a possibility that this unbranded MKII served as an example of a transitional bridge between the two- and three-transistor Tone Benders. This is disputed, however, by the selection of components used in the construction of this pedal, which reveal that the pedal most likely wasn’t built before 1967 (and certainly well after the two-transistor Tone Bender circuit was discontinued).

This unbranded Tone Bender MKII is, at the time of writing, the only one of its sort known to have survived. Because of this, we cannot rule out other possible explanations, such as the pedal perhaps having been rebuilt by Sola Sound at a later point, or even whether the pedal might have been intended as a generic model, to be supplied to a variety of shops in the way that some of the conventional 1966 ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders seemingly were. (Photo credit: eBay.com)

OEM products

In 1966, Sola Sound was also acting as an OEM (original equipment manufacturer). This meant that, alongside the official ‘Tone Bender’ fuzz boxes, the company was also supplying the same product on behalf of a number of other brands. The same electronics that were built into the grey (and sometimes gold) Tone Benders, found their way into similar cast aluminium housings, but branded instead for companies such as Dallas [Rangemaster Fuzzbug] & Rotosound [Fuzz Box]. A generic, unbranded ‘Fuzz Box’ featuring a ‘MK1.5’ circuit was also briefly offered in 1966, and the anecdotal evidence surrounding one particular surviving example reveals it to have been originally sold by a music shop in Ireland.

Sola Sound’s position in the market as an OEM would continue until well into the 1970s, and the company’s guitar effects pedal designs that followed the ‘MK1.5’ were also supplied to other companies, much in the same way as with the Tone Bender. A selection of Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’ pedals that were rebranded for other companies and/or shops is pictured above. (Photo credit: J. How & D. Main)

Other notable users

Because a portion of the stock of ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders was modified to three-transistor Tone Bender MKII specifications, whilst retaining the same enclosure & hardware, it is almost impossible to determine from period photos which version of the Tone Bender a celebrity musician might have used. The grey Tone Benders that artists such as Jimmy Page (Yardbirds & Led Zeppelin), Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd) & Mike Ratledge (Soft Machine) were photographed using could have been built with either ‘MK1.5’ or MKII circuits.

The Beatles were photographed in the studio with a Tone Bender in April 1966.⁴⁸ Based on the type of enclosure, and the timing of the photograph, in this instance, it is almost certain that the pedal in the photo is a ‘MK1.5′ Tone Bender. It’s unknown, however, whether this pedal was actually used for any of the Beatles’ recordings.

Testimonies and physical descriptions from original owners of Tone Benders reveal a number of specific songs that were recorded with the ‘MK1.5′. These include Him & The Others’ ‘I mean it‘,⁴⁹ the Transatlantics’ ‘Don’t fight it‘,⁵⁰ and Downliners Sect’s ‘Glendora‘.⁵¹

Distant cousins

The famous ‘Vox Tone Bender’ (model v828), pictured below, is easily mistaken for the two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders, because they were built in a very similar style enclosure, and featured a very similar two-transistor fuzz circuit. Unlike the British-built Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’, however, the Vox ‘v828’ Tone Benders were manufactured in Italy until the early 1970s. They were initially made by EME (Elettronica Musicale Europea), which was the company also responsible for building organs & wah-wah pedals under the Vox brand. Production was later taken over by the newly founded company, ‘Jen’. This Italian-built Vox Tone Bender was apparently intended for the American market. The model ‘v828’ appears in Thomas Organ catalogues from the time, and surviving examples overwhelmingly also resurface in the United States.

Pictured above, the British-built ‘MK1.5’ Tone Bender can be seen (left), along with its distant Italian-built model ‘v828’ cousins (middle & right).

Despite sharing the same model name & circuit topology, the Vox Tone Bender should not be attributed with the ‘MK1.5’ moniker. As to avoid confusion, a sensible way of differentiating between the two is by attributing the Italian model with its model number, as listed in period catalogues (namely ‘v828’). After all, the ‘MK1.5’ moniker refers to a very specific Sola Sound fuzz box: a de facto ‘missing link’ between the ‘MKI’ and Professional MKII.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Sola Sound Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’ appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Overview

The original Vox Distortion Booster was designed in 1965, and was initially built by Jennings Musical Instruments (JMI) in the UK as part of a set of four different ‘plug-in’ Booster units: the (chrome) Treble Booster, the (black) Bass Booster, the (blue) Mic Booster, and the famous red Distortion Booster.

Unlike early foot-operated guitar effects, the series of Vox boosters were intended to be plugged directly to the amplifier’s input. They were very compact and had no controls to tweak each effect other than a (hand-operated) bypass toggle switch. As if this format wasn’t already impractical for stage use, the same switch that toggled the effect in and out on these early British models was also used to disconnect the battery. The consequence of this switching arrangement is that engaging any of these Boosters on for a guitar solo mid-song would result in a loud distracting ‘pop’ sound.

The set of four JMI Vox booster units was demonstrated at the British Musical Instrument Industries Trade Fair in August of 1965.¹ Reportedly, however, there was a delay in production specific to the Distortion Booster,⁵² and so it’s unclear when the red model from the set actually made it to the market.

Pictured above is a selection of advertisements for the JMI Vox Distortion Boosters, along with a trio of survivors from my own collection (and I’d be delighted to hear from anyone willing to sell the Vox Mic Booster, so that I might complete the set!).

A British-built red Vox Distortion Booster can be heard on the Gremlins’ 1966 cover of ‘High Time Baby’.⁵³ A reader recalled the Rolling Stones performing on Ready Steady Go! with a red Distortion Booster visibly plugged into one of the amps, but unfortunately the television footage is not known to have survived. The most famous user of the Vox Distortion Booster is Brian May, who had the electronics rehoused into his famous Red Special guitar. Brian May’s use of the Vox Distortion Booster can likely be heard on the early 1984 and Smile recordings. His specific unit is detailed further below.

Vox maintained production of this sort of ‘alternative form’ guitar effects units throughout the 1960s. As time went on, production of the Distortion Booster (as well as the Treble and Bass models) expanded beyond the UK. The Vox brand name appears on an assortment of very similar ‘plug-in’ style booster effects that were also built in the United States as well as in Italy, and all the different versions are explored on this page.

Jennings Musical Instruments — Vox

1965-1966 | Germanium Vox Distortion Booster

The earliest Vox Distortion Boosters were built with a germanium transistor circuit (using STC ASY50 transistors) based off Gibson’s famous Maestro Fuzz-Tone. The main differences between the two models are that the germanium Distortion Boosters omitted the first transistor stage of the Fuzz-Tone’s circuit, and that the Distortion Boosters were also powered by a 9 volt battery instead of the Fuzz-Tone’s pair of 1.5 volt batteries.

Layout #1

The germanium version of the Distortion Booster was probably quite short-lived due to its rarity, but nevertheless, examples have been sighted with two different parts layouts. The rusty unit pictured here features 1/2w carbon composite resistors that are mounted upright. This particular rusty unit originally belonged to Richard McCracken (who played alongside Rory Gallagher in Taste).⁵⁴

Pictured below are the surviving remains of the actual Distortion Booster that was once housed in Brian May’s Red Special guitar. The parts selection and layout reveals it to be an early germanium Distortion Booster, as opposed to the later silicon transistor circuit that is often misattributed to May’s early fuzz sounds. (Photo credit: Kevin Nixon/Future Publishing)

Layout #2

This Distortion Booster has been very well preserved over the decades, and internally, it features a visually pleasing symmetrical parts layout. The mixture of parts types and values in this booster is very similar to the rustier one pictured previously. However, these pedals are sometimes also sighted with 1/3w Iskra resistors instead of the brown 1/2w carbon composites, and it is therefore possible that these ‘symmetrical layout’ Distortion Boosters came first in the chronology. At present there is far too little information from which to draw firm conclusions. Interestingly, the germanium Distortion Boosters with this symmetrical parts layout have thus far only resurfaced in Germany and the Netherlands.

1966-1968 | Silicon Vox Distortion Booster

Later examples of the red model featured a BC108 silicon transistor ‘textbook’ negative feedback amplifier circuit (similar to, but not directly related with, the two-transistor Tone Benders and Fuzz Faces.) The Vox graphics on the enclosures of these silicon Distortion Boosters (and on the contemporaneous Treble and Bass Boosters) were updated at this point in the chronology, and differentiating between the two logos is a very reliable way of identifying whether a red Distortion Booster has the silicon or the germanium transistor circuit. (Photo credit: Blunt Force Audio)

As with the earlier germanium Distortion Boosters, these red silicon transistor units also often resurface in the Netherlands, which is a strong indicator that JMI had a distribution arrangement in place over there. This particular version of the Distortion Booster (as well as the JMI Vox Treble Boosters) occasionally also resurfaces in the United States, and so it’s possible that Thomas Organ initially imported the boosters before finalising the development of their own version.

Thomas Organ — Vox

1966 | Vox Distortion Booster (v816)

By late 1965, Thomas Organ had already begun prototyping their own version of the Distortion Booster, for distribution under Vox in the United States.⁵⁵ The finished product was given the model designation ‘v816’, and it came housed in a very similar rectangular shaped casing to the JMI units (and as were the similar American-built Treble and Bass Boosters). Instead of the range of colourful paint jobs, however, the Thomas Organ Vox booster units all came in chrome. The known surviving Thomas Organ Vox Distortion Boosters all feature the silicon transistor circuit, assembled on a small piece of perfboard. This American-built v816 was more or less the same as the silicon transistor JMI Distortion Booster. (Photo credit: C. Nelson)

Thomas Organ’s Vox Distortion Booster was pictured in American Vox literature, and named on the Thomas Organ July 1966 price list. By November 1966, however, it had already been replaced with a new ‘Deluxe’ model.

1966-1968 | Vox Deluxe Distortion Booster (v8161)

The shortcomings that plagued Vox Distortion Boosters on both sides of the Atlantic were finally addressed when a new ‘Deluxe’ Distortion Booster was announced in the November 1966 Thomas Organ accessories catalogue. The Deluxe Distortion Booster finally had an adjustable volume control fitted to it, and even more importantly, the unit was reconfigured to be plugged directly into the guitar, rather than into the amplifier’s input. This enabled players to toggle the distortion on and off while performing (provided that their guitar didn’t have a recessed jack socket). (Photo credit: Guitarworksltd)

Jen Distortion Boosters

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the red-coloured (JMI) Vox Distortion Boosters were likely discontinued around the time of JMI’s dissolution in 1968. In the same year, the British music retailer, Rosetti, began running advertisements in the press for a series of Italian-built Jen effects pedals.⁵⁶ Among them was a new version of the plug-in Distortion Booster. (Photo credit: Reverb.com)

The new model featured a silicon transistor fuzz circuit, housed in a square plastic casing, and most notably, was designed to be fitted directly to the guitar’s output rather than to the amplifier. This was also the first time that a Distortion Booster unit was built with a potentiometer to adjust the intensity of the fuzz sound.

Thomas Organ also ceased production of the rectangular chrome Deluxe Distortion Boosters in 1968, when a new Vox-branded model, identical to the Jen unit, began appearing in American Vox catalogues. Jen was already responsible for supplying Vox-branded Tone Benders & wah-wah pedals to the American market, and these Italian-built Distortion Boosters were both functionally and electronically also similar to the British counterpart.

For the remainder of the 1960s and well into the 1970s, Distortion Boosters were manufactured at the same facility in Italy for both the British, American and European markets.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to J. Voggenthaler/Electric Warrior & the Vox AC100 website (https://www.voxac100.org.uk)

The post Vox Distortion Booster appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

History

Zonk Machine fuzz boxes were manufactured during the mid-to-late 1960s and distributed by John Hornby Skewes’ now-famous musical instruments retail company in Leeds.

Skewes recalled in 2015 that the Zonk Machine was designed by Charlie Ramskir (known for his work with Miles Platting amplifiers & Wilsic Sound), and that the reason why the Zonk Machine was discontinued in 1968 was because Ramskir died.¹ This version of events is unreliable because Ramskir was still involved with the Miles Platting brand in 1973,⁵⁷ and according to death records, actually died a decade later than Skewes remembers (albeit still prematurely).⁵⁸ Ramskir was certainly involved with Hornby Skewes’ later offerings, because models such as the (silicon-transistor) Zonk II were also being offered under Ramskir’s own ‘Wilsic Sound’ brand during the early 1970s.

An unknown representative for Hornby Skewes provided an alternative version of events some time prior to the 2015 VintageGuitar interview, which fits in better with the surrounding evidence.⁵⁹ Charlie Ramskir may have been involved with Hornby Skewes as early as in late 1965/early 1966, but Skewes’ own account can’t be trusted by itself. It’s distinctly possible that the Zonk Machines were ‘designed’ by a different engineer, whose identity may have been forgotten over time.

The exact origins of the Zonk Machine (ZZ.1) are a little murky, but the circuitry and the shape of the pedal’s enclosure look suspiciously similar to Sola Sound’s Tone Bender ‘MKI’. It’s likely that the designer of the Zonk Machine — Ramskir or otherwise — had access to an early ‘MKI’ for reference.

Early surviving Zonk Machines date to 1966, when the company was also reported to have been exporting fuzz boxes,⁶⁰ and the youngest examples date to 1968. It is possible that the Zonk Machine was first developed as early as in 1965, but this is still unconfirmed.

Hornby Skewes were reportedly also selling their guitar effects units abroad,⁶¹ and this can be corroborated by the fact that original Zonk Machines overwhelmingly resurface in Canada.

Tech specs

The Zonk Machine’s three-transistor circuit gradually evolved during the two-to-three year period in which it was being produced. As with many of the early fuzz boxes, the Zonk Machine’s circuit resembled Gibson’s Maestro Fuzz-Tone, but the model was much more similar to the Tone Bender ‘MKI’, and it is likely that this was its true inspiration.

Zonk Machines were housed in enclosures made of folded aluminium and weighed considerably less than the version of the Tone Bender, housed in steel, that inspired it. These cases were painted in the same teal hammered finish that Hornby Skewes’ various treble, bass, and ‘treble & bass’ (Selectatone) effects units also came in.

Similar to the Tone Bender, the Zonk Machines were powered by 9 volt batteries. Early examples of the Zonk Machine had a battery clasp fastened to the main chassis, while later units had their battery clasp attached to the removable cover behind the pedal’s controls. The back cover was also where Hornby Skewes stamped the company’s logo.

Different versions

Zonk Machine (PCB version), c. 1966-1967

Early Zonk Machines were built on printed circuit boards (PCB). These pedals typically feature a Texas Instruments (TI) 2G309 or a TI AO2 transistor in the first position, followed by Mullard ‘black glass’ transistors (OC44, OC71 or OC75) for the second & third positions. Particularly early examples of the PCB Zonk Machine featured a triplet of Mullard transistors.

Of these PCB Zonk Machine, the earlier examples featured brown carbon composite resistors, before Hornby Skewes started fitting the yellow (likely Iskra) types. The very earliest of the known PCB Zonk Machines also featured Bulgin open jack sockets, and a battery clasp fastened to the bottom of the casing, rather than to the removeable rear cover.

The pedal pictured above has been built with a very typical mixture of components for this version of the Zonk Machine: yellow resistors, closed-type Cliff jack sockets, and the AO2/OC75/OC44 transistor configuration. (Photo credit: D. Main)

Zonk Machine (stripboard version), c. 1967-1968

Zonk Machines were also built on stripboard (also known in the UK as Veroboard). Stripboard is often used for prototyping circuits, and so it might seem intuitive that these Zonk Machines would predate the ones built on the aforementioned dedicated printed circuit boards. Date codes on the components of Zonk Machines, however, reveal that these stripboard Zonk Machines were actually among the youngest built.

The earlier stripboard Zonk Machines used a similar mixture of components as the preceding PCB pedals (including the AO2/OC75/OC71 transistor set). Towards the tail end of production, the Zonk Machine’s circuit & stripboard layout was modified slightly, and the second position transistor was replaced with a silicon 2N4061 transistor (along with a trimpot to adjust its bias). Pictured above is one of the youngest Zonk Machines, built with the hybrid germanium/silicon-transistor circuit. (Photo credit: D. Morrison)

Zonk Machine (tag board version)

The Zonk Machine pictured above surfaced in 2015, and it features an unusual selection of components that were assembled onto tag board. JHS’s use of 2G309 transistors in this pedal suggests that it might have been built prior to the shift over to stripboard construction, but there isn’t enough information yet to accurately place this tag board Zonk Machine within the wider chronology of Hornby Skewes fuzz boxes. At the time of writing, this tag board Zonk Machine is the only one of its kind that is known to have survived. (Photo credit: Reverb.com)

Notable users

Mani Neumeier is credited on Guru Guru’s 1971 Krautrock album, Hinten, as having performed with a Zonk Machine. Fellow bandmate Uli Trepte later went on naming a track from his 1979 self-titled solo project, Spacebox, after the pedal.

The Canadian hard rock group, Warpig, recorded extensively with the Zonk Machine.⁶²

The Zonk Machine, pictured above, was sold on eBay in 2010, by the guitarist of the Canadian psychedelic group, the Plastic Cloud. It was confirmed at the time that this was the exact pedal with which the group recorded on their 1968 eponymous LP. (Photo credit: M. Cadieux)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post John Hornby Skewes Zonk Machine appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Overview

Selmer is a household name among brass and woodwind musicians, but for a brief period, the organisation’s branch in the UK offered equipment to electric guitarists too, via what would go on to become the company’s famous showroom at 114-116 Charing Cross Road. During the mid-1960s, Selmer equipment was being manufactured at a factory in Holborn, London,⁶¹, and so it’s quite likely that this is where the Buzz Tones were assembled.

The Selmer Buzz Tone was an early British fuzz box design, and was already being presented at the British Musical Instrument Industries Trade Fair in August of 1966. Selmer printed regular advertisements for the model in the British press during late 1966, and a selection of cuttings are pictured below.

It is unknown for how long the Buzz Tone remained in production, but the basic fuzz circuit from the Buzz Tone was eventually redesigned, and it found its way into Selmer’s more sophisticated Fuzz-wah pedal, which was introduced in 1968.⁶³ The very low number of extant Selmer Buzz Tone pedals suggests that the model might not have been manufactured at the same sort of scale as some of Selmer’s contemporaries.

Tech specs

Prior to the surge in demand for fuzz boxes in 1965, Selmer were already offering Gibson’s Maestro Fuzz-Tone to the British market,⁶⁴ and so it comes as little surprise that the pedal of their own was both visually and electronically inspired by its American counterpart.

Just like Gibson’s earlier fuzz box, the Selmer Buzz Tone featured a three-transistor circuit, and the components were also mounted to an eyelet board. Buzz Tones also came equipped with a hard-wired input cable, and were housed in a heavy, steel enclosure.

The bottom cover can be rather difficult to remove when replacing batteries in the Selmer Buzz Tone. That, along with the precarious manner in which the two halves of the enclosure are connected together, by the wiring of the circuit, offers a possible explanation for why so few examples of the Buzz Tone have survived.

It’s unclear what sort of supply voltage Selmer intended for the Buzz Tone to run off. Selmer’s factory schematic (pictured below) recommends 3 volts, whereas an early advertisement states 1.5 volts.

European connections

A number of original examples of the Buzz Tone have since resurfaced in Germany and in Switzerland, so it’s possible (but unconfirmed) that Selmer might have offered their fuzz box to international markets in addition to Britain’s. Selmer’s relationship with the Höfner company in Germany lends weight to this theory, particularly, given that Höfner would go on to release their own version of the Buzz Tone in 1967.

The Selmer Buzz Tone pictured below — with non-original knobs, and a circuit that has presumably been rebuilt at some point — formerly belonged to the Krautrock group, Amon Düül II. (Credit: A. Dehn)

Pink Floyd

A popular talking point about the Selmer Buzz Tone is its speculative link with Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd famously used Selmer amplifiers early on in their career, and there’s a long-standing rumour that Syd Barrett used the Buzz Tone during his brief period with the group. Unfortunately there’s no direct evidence yet to substantiate this.

Syd Barrett was photographed on two occasions using a British-built Sola Sound Tone Bender (as opposed to an Italian-built Vox Tone Bender, as some publications incorrectly state), and he also revealed in an interview to have at one point been using a “home-made” fuzz box.⁶⁵ Nevertheless, the possibility that Barrett may briefly have performed, recorded, or otherwise experimented with a Selmer Buzz Tone remains open, and I would greatly welcome any further evidence to support it.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

The post Selmer Buzz Tone appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Overview

The Buzzaround was developed by Jim Burns’ guitar company in the mid-1960s, and manufactured in relatively small numbers over the course of several years. Burns’ Buzzaround was named in a Burns price list from April 1966, but even the earliest of the known extant pedals were built with potentiometers dating to September 1966, and there is no known picture, or even mention, of the model in the press until winter of 1966. The date codes stamped on the potentiometers of surviving examples of the Buzzaround reveal that the model was still being built by early 1969.

For the longest time, little was known about the origins of the Buzzaround circuit, and the rumours about a connection with famed designer of the Tone Bender, Gary Hurst, have never been supported with any evidence. Eventually, in 2021, it was discovered that the Buzzaround was an unauthorised copy of a much more obscure mid-1960s fuzzbox, called the G. P. Electronics Harmonic Generator.⁶⁴

Sola Sound used a circuit for their Tone Bender MKIII that was very likely to have been based on the earlier Buzzaround design, but the Tone Bender MKIII was modified to include a tone control. At some point in the late 1960s, the Italian musical instrument company, Elka, released the Dizzy Tone fuzz pedal, which was also derivative of the Buzzaround.

A single exemplar of a ‘Baldwin’ fuzz box was discovered in the United States, and was believed by a former owner to have been a prototype for an American version of the Buzzaround. This unit runs from a lower supply voltage, but the basic schematic is based on the British model.⁶⁶

An unusually high number of original Buzzarounds have surfaced in Australia, which suggests that Baldwin-Burns might have had distribution agreements in place to sell them over there, in addition to in the UK.

Tech specs

Buzzaround pedals were housed in a folded steel enclosure and came painted in dark grey Hammerite. They featured an electronic circuit built on tag board, with three germanium NKT213 transistors. The way that the three controls on Burns’ Buzzaround interact make for a very flexible instrument, and compared with the much more rudimentary-sounding pedals from the mid-1960s, this one wouldn’t feel too far out of place in a recording session for modern distorted guitars.

Buzzarounds were also fitted with a panel underneath denoting their serial numbers. The known range of serial numbers on surviving Buzzarounds spans from 6134 to 7993, but because identical panels have been found in Burns amplifiers, with similar serial numbers falling within that range, it is impossible to even estimate how many Buzzarounds might have originally been produced.

The front panel for the Buzzaround was designed by Eddie Cross, who was involved in the production of the pickguards on Burns guitars during the 1960s, and who preserved his original technical drawing of the Buzzaround’s control layout (pictured below).

The Burns Buzzaround was reported in the November 1966 issue of Beat Instrumental to have been redesigned with a “special sustain effect”.⁶⁷ The language used to describe this development has led some people in recent times to believe that there once existed a version of the Buzzaround with only two knobs (presumably missing the ‘sustain’ control). There is, however, no such known surviving example of a ‘two-knob’ Buzzaround, and because the earlier G. P. Harmonic Generator also features three controls, it is unlikely that a more primitive version of the Buzzaround exists.

What is known, however, is that some of the earliest Buzzarounds were built with non-latching footswitches. This means that the user would have to keep their foot down on the pedal in order to ‘sustain’ the fuzz sound, and so it’s quite possible that the reporting in the press of a “fresh” version of the Buzzaround referred to Burns’ decision to begin fitting latching footswitches to their pedals, thereby making it easier for the user to create a sustained fuzz sound.

Notable users

A discussion about the Buzzaround is incomplete without a mention of the band most famously connected with it: King Crimson. Robert Fripp confirms that it was the Buzzaround that he used on the earlier Giles, Giles & Fripp recordings.⁶⁸ Fripp also refutes the allegation that the Buzzaround was used for his guitar parts on David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’,⁶⁹ and photos of King Crimson suggest that Fripp had stopped using Buzzaround pedals by the early 1970s, using pedals like Guild’s Foxey Lady for his distorted sounds instead.

According to Tony Arnold, either one or both of Robert Fripp’s Buzzarounds were eventually rehoused into a rackmount unit. The remains of the enclosure of one of Fripp’s Buzzarounds still survives, and is pictured below. (Photo credit: S. Park)

Other groups who were photographed using the Burns Buzzaround include the Troggs and the Soft Machine.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to B. Lovegrove & the Burns Guitars group on Facebook

The post Baldwin-Burns Buzzaround appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

History

During the 1960s, Pepe Rush ran a recording studio on Berwick Street in Soho, London. Pepe also had a workshop in a nearby mews, and this was presumably where much of the ‘Rush Electronics’ studio equipment was built, including the various guitar & bass amplifiers and effects units.

Early Pep Boxes were reportedly sold by Rush directly to musicians.⁷⁰ Later on, Pepe Rush partnered up with Charlie Watkins, and the pedals were marketed & sold under the WEM brand.

It is not known at what point Rush began building fuzz boxes, but by August 1965 he was already involved with WEM, because the Pep Box was demonstrated by WEM at the British Musical Instrument Industries Trade Fair of that year.⁷¹ An early version of the Pep Box was pictured and advertised in Melody Maker, at various times in early 1966.

No examples of the Pep Box, built before Rush’s partnership with WEM, are known to have survived. A common misconception is that the red ‘Fuzzy’ pedals, featuring a ‘pep’ control, were early versions of the Pep Box. The red ‘Fuzzy’ pedals appear to have been built in Germany, which is where they tend to resurface, and the date codes on the components in these pedals confirm that the model was only built following the WEM Rush ‘silver wedge’ era of Pep Boxes. Pepe Rush, himself, did not recognise the model when questioned about it.⁷²

There are currently two different known fuzz circuits that the Pep Boxes were made up with, both based off Gibson’s earlier Maestro Fuzz-Tone. The main difference between the Pep Box and the Maestro unit, was that Rush’s design was adapted for 9 volt operation, and its circuit had the first transistor stage omitted. The earlier of the two known Pep Box schematics featured a germanium-transistor circuit, while later models (including those manufactured by WEM) were built with silicon transistors.

The enclosures for early, wedge-shaped Pep Boxes were likely made by Pepe Rush (or by somebody else, subcontracted by Rush), because Rush claimed in an interview that WEM weren’t initially equipped to manufacture the enclosures themselves.⁷³

Different versions

Black, with germanium transistors

WEM Rush Pep Box pedals were initially built in wedge-shaped enclosures, made of folded steel. Some of the very earliest Pep Boxes were finished in black wrinkle paint, and featured engraved Traffolyte panels.

The pedal, photographed here, certainly predates the known silver ‘wedge-shaped’ Pep Boxes. It features a germanium-transistor circuit (using ACY41’s), and is built ‘point-to-point’ on an eyelet board. This early Pep Box belonged to Roger John Cameron, who was a guitarist & collector of guitar pedals, and who sadly passed away in January 2021.

Similar examples of this black Pep Box are reported to have been built, but without the engraved panels.⁷⁴

Silver, with germanium transistors

The pedal in the photograph below is the earliest known surviving version of the silver ‘wedge-shaped’ Pep Box. Similarly to the earlier black model, the early silver Pep Boxes also came with engraved Traffolyte panels and a germanium-transistor circuit. By the time that this silver pedal was built, however, the components in the Pep Boxes were being assembled on a printed circuit board.

This Pep Box was built during the period of around late 1965 to early 1966, and originally belonged to famed skiffle player, Chas McDevitt. McDevitt was an acquaintance of Pepe Rush’s, and ran a coffee bar next to Rush’s basement studio on Berwick Street. On a slight personal note, this silver germanium-transistor Pep Box is among my all-time favourites from within my collection.

In 2015, Pepe Rush reissued a series of silver wedge-shaped Pep Boxes based on this version of the circuit. Following Pepe’s death in 2018, his daughter (Lucy) continues to build silver Pep Boxes with this early design.

Silver, with silicon transistors

By around early 1966, the circuit of the Pep Box was updated to reflect the use of BC107-type silicon transistors in place of the earlier germanium type. Functionally, however, the Pep Box remained unchanged.

The first of the silicon-transistor Pep Boxes were built in the same silver, wedge-shaped boxes, as the earlier germanium version. By the time that the circuit was updated for silicon transistors, the Pep Boxes were also fitted with screen-printed Traffolyte panels, as opposed to the engraved panels.

Later, ‘long red’ Pep Boxes

By July 1966,⁷⁵ WEM were already producing their own enclosures for the Pep Box. The ‘long red’ WEM Rush Pep Box (as above) was pictured in product catalogues and in press advertisements. These distinctive housings were made from a combination of red-painted steel and wood, with the same metal trim that can be seen on WEM’s Powercat amplifiers. The same construction would later be used for WEM’s Project V fuzz box (which was otherwise unrelated to Pepe Rush).

These ‘long red’ Pep Boxes featured the same silicon-transistor circuit as the last of the silver wedge-shaped units. The selection of electronic components changed slightly, and a new printed circuit board design was made to accommodate the newer enclosure.

Whether or not Pepe Rush was still involved with the assembly of these pedals, following the change to the ‘long red’ enclosures, is unknown. At some point in the mid-1960s, WEM took over production of the Pep Box altogether, and Rush’s relationship with WEM reportedly soured. Pepe Rush recalled a conflict about WEM removing his name from the product,⁷⁶ and indeed, some of the earliest Pep Boxes that were housed in the WEM-built, ‘long red’ enclosures, were missing the ‘Rush’ branding.

Most of these ‘long red’ Pep Boxes did, however, feature Rush’s name, and based on the date codes and the PCB designs of all of these ‘long red’ Pep Boxes, it actually looks more likely that WEM reverted to printing the Rush brand on their pedals, following only a brief period of claiming it as their own design.

An alternative version of events was provided by a friend & former colleague of Pepe’s, who recalled Pepe’s frustration that came as a result of WEM allegedly using “inferior” components for “their version” of the Pep Box.⁷⁷

The exact relationship between Pepe Rush and Charlie Watkins will likely remain unknown.

Predating the Arbiter Fuzz Face, it is interesting to note that the ‘long red’ WEM Pep Boxes also featured a rubber mat around the footswitch.

Notable users

Most notably, John Lennon was photographed with a Pep Box on at least three occasions in April 1966, during the recording sessions for the Beatles’ ‘Paperback writer’ & ‘Rain’. The non-typical placement of the output cable on the Beatles’ pedal, as well as its slightly oversized ‘WEM Rush’ panel, suggests that their pedal likely featured the germanium transistor circuit. Another photo emerged with the 2022 release of the Revolver Special Edition, showing a basket of instruments and accessories used during the Beatles’ recording sessions at EMI in 1966. Notably visible in the container is a Tone Bender (‘MK1.5’) and the silver WEM Rush Pep Box, wrapped in its output cable. Whether the WEM Pep Box actually made it onto those, or any recordings at all, from the Beatles’ 1966 Revolver LP is unknown.

One early adopter of the Pep Box were the Artwoods. The group became acquainted with Pepe Rush following a chance encounter in the mid-1960s, and they ended up using an early version of the Pep Box on their songs, ‘I feel good’ and ‘Things get better’.⁷⁸

Pepe Rush recalled delivering two Pep Boxes to Cecil Sharp House (English Folk Dance & Song Society) where the Shadows were rehearsing,⁷⁹ but it is unknown whether the group ever actually recorded or performed with any of Rush’s pedals.

The Edgar Broughton band reputedly also made use of a WEM Pep Box.⁸⁰

A WEM Pep Box may have briefly been used by King Crimson, as the model is specifically listed in the sleeve notes for a reissue of the group’s 1969 LP, In the court of the Crimson King. Robert Fripp also recalled playing with a “WEM fuzz box”, in a response to a reader’s enquiry about King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’.⁸¹ This testimony was printed several years prior to Fripp’s famous sessions with Brian Eno (where he may have experimented with Paul Rudolph’s/Eno’s WEM Project V), and so we can assume the ‘fuzz box’ to have been a Pep Box.

Pepe Rush was reportedly friendly with Eric Clapton,⁸² and Clapton provided a written endorsement of the WEM Rush Pep Box in response to a reader’s query in the press.⁸³. Clapton does concede not actually having played the model, however.

Phil Chen was photographed playing bass guitar with Jimmy James & the Vagabonds, on Ready Steady Go in 1966, with a silver wedge-shaped Pep Box visible on the floor.⁸⁴ When questioned more recently, however, Chen did not recall using any fuzz boxes for his bass guitar sound. The Danelectro Longhorn bass that he was photographed playing for that set reportedly belonged to John Entwistle, following a theft of the Vagabonds’ own instruments,⁸⁵ and so it is possible — but unconfirmed — that the WEM Pep Box pictured on the floor may have also belonged to the Who.

The Animals featured regularly in WEM’s press advertisements for the Pep Box. Guitarist Hilton Valentine was photographed various times performing with a Pep Box on stage. The first picture above shows Valentine in Paris, on March 15th 1966, plugged into an early silver, wedge-shaped Pep Box (along with a white FAL Treble Booster). Only a few months later, Hilton Valentine was during an Animals concert in Winston-Salem, NC, on July 26th 1966, making adjustments to the newer ‘long red’ version of the WEM Rush Pep Box. This strongly suggests that the Animals used a Pep Box of some sort on their 1966 single, ‘Don’t bring me down’. (Photo credit: Georges Melet & unknown)

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to C. McDevitt, R. Harper, D. Griffiths, M. Wilsher, S. Murphy & Pepe Rush

The post WEM Rush Pep Box appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Part 1: History

The early days

Ivor Arbiter was born in Balham, south London, in December 1929.⁷¹ His father, Joe Arbiter, was a professional saxophone and clarinet player with Harry Roy’s dance band.⁷⁶

In 1943, by the age of 14, Ivor Arbiter was working as an apprentice for Barney Lubelle, who ran the Saxophone Shop on Soho Street. By the time he was 16, Arbiter had set up his own instrument repair shop in the basement of a barber’s on Kingley Street. Over the next few years, Arbiter’s small business moved around various locations of Soho, including on Frith Street and Shaftesbury Avenue.^{77 78}

Ivor’s father, Joe, reportedly retired from playing music professionally in 1956, and it was at this point that Ivor decided to run his instrument repair business together with Joe out of their own commercial space (described as a “small room”) above a shop on 76 Shaftesbury Avenue.⁷⁹ Arbiter traded under the name Paramount, in reference to Paramount Court, where the family lived.⁸⁰ To be precise, the earliest known formal business venture of Ivor’s was called Paramount Repairs, based at 76 Shaftesbury Avenue.⁸²

At some point in the early part of 1957, Ivor Arbiter expanded the business through the acquisition of the shop downstairs, and Paramount Musical Instrument Co. began selling instruments (including drums and guitars) from 74/76 Shaftesbury Avenue.⁸⁶ This would mark the beginning of Ivor Arbiter’s career selling musical instruments. During the early 1960s, Joe Arbiter had passed away, and Ivor Arbiter’s retail business had become so successful that he had expanded to two further shops in Soho: Drum City on 114 Shaftesbury Avenue and Sound City on 22 Rupert Street (pictured above).⁸⁷ It was around this time that Ivor reportedly designed the Beatles’ famous ‘drop-t’ logo.⁸⁸

The most famous Sound City shop on 124 Shaftesbury Avenue, pictured above, opened in March 1964.⁸⁹ Arbiter’s Sound City store on Shaftesbury Avenue would continue to operate through the 1960s and into the 1970s.

Arbiter Electronics

By the mid-60s, Arbiter had set up its own factory and was manufacturing musical instruments and accessories at 33 Woodthorpe Road, Ashford, Middlesex.⁹⁰ In 1966, the famous Arbiter Fuzz Face was developed, and it was first presented at the British Musical Instrument Industries trade fair held in August of that year.⁹¹ Date codes on the potentiometers of surviving examples suggest that production was only properly ramped up by September of that year, because units with pot codes earlier than September are particularly uncommon. The Fuzz Face was already available in the shops by November 1966, when Jimi Hendrix was photographed performing with one.⁹²

Arbiter clearly had high expectations for the Fuzz Face because they were advertising the model to American retailers as early as in November 1966⁹³ and even the earliest Fuzz Faces dating to 1966-1967 resurface outside the UK more or less as often as they do at home. Pictured above is the bottom plate from a 1966-1967 Arbiter Fuzz Face that was unearthed in Sweden, and that still has its original factory ‘export’ sticker intact.

Production of the Fuzz Face in the UK by Arbiter (and Dallas) lasted until the mid-1970s, before moving to the USA in the late 1970s. The manufacturing rights also changed hands a number of times, and the Fuzz Face continued being offered by various different companies to guitarists during the 1980s and 1990s (even briefly including Arbiter once again). More than half a century after its inception, the Fuzz Face remains a hugely popular fuzz box, largely in part due to its association with Jimi Hendrix. Fuzz Faces are still manufactured more or less to the original schematic to this day, and are now sold around the world by Dunlop Manufacturing Inc.

Arbiter, Dallas and CBS

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Arbiter company went through various phases of merging back and forth with other companies, and consequently the Fuzz Faces ended up being branded by a number of different outfits. These included J & I Arbiter Ltd., CBS/Arbiter, Dallas Music Industries, and most famously Dallas-Arbiter. It is important to note at this point that the Fuzz Face was first and foremost an Arbiter product.

J. & I. Arbiter & Dallas Music Limited were apparently still two distinct organisations when they demonstrated their respective products at separate booths, at the March 1968 Musikmesse trade fair. In April 1968, however, it was reported that Arbiter had recently merged with Dallas.⁹⁴ The merger of these two companies was reflected in the branding of the Fuzz Face, and from 1968 until the mid-1970s, these Arbiter pedals were rebranded as products by ‘Dallas-Arbiter · England’.

Things became much more complicated by the mid-1970s. Ivor Arbiter held a major stake in Dallas-Arbiter, but experienced a “clash of personalities” and felt “disenchanted” and ending up pulling out of the company.⁹⁵ By 1974, Arbiter signed to become a European dealer of Fender products (which, by then, was taken over by CBS), and CBS/Arbiter was formed.⁹⁶ During this period of around 1974-1975, the Fuzz Face branding was changed to reflect Arbiter’s new outfit, and it went from being a Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face to a CBS/Arbiter Fuzz Face.

Meanwhile, Dallas, who had acquired the rights to the Vox brand a few years earlier, sought to revive the famous amplifier company, and in 1974, Tom Jennings was re-appointed to run his old company under the Dallas umbrella. Manufacturing of the new Vox equipment took place at Dallas’ new factory in Shoeburyness, Essex, but Dallas would soon fall into financial difficulty. Coming full circle, Dallas was acquired by CBS/Arbiter, and consequently the last of the Fuzz Faces built in the UK (c. 1975-1976) were branded Dallas Music Industries.⁹⁷

Despite all of Arbiter’s corporate reshuffling, over the course of the decade that Fuzz Faces were being manufactured, the Fuzz Face’s design went virtually unchanged.

As a side note, the merge between Arbiter and Dallas in 1968 was not the first time that Dallas was involved in selling fuzz boxes. Around the same time in 1966 that Arbiter unveiled the Fuzz Face, Dallas was also being supplied by Sola Sound with Rangemaster Fuzzbug pedals. These Fuzzbugs were nothing more than rebranded Sola Sound Tone Benders, but because some earlier Fuzzbugs used the two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ Tone Bender circuit that Arbiter based the Fuzz Face on, the Fuzzbug has been incorrectly speculated by some as being evidence of a direct link between Dallas and Arbiter as early as in 1966.

At the time of writing, however, there is no evidence to actually support this theory. Dallas was simply among a larger number of companies that were supplied by Sola Sound with rebranded fuzz boxes, and the Fuzz Face was developed specifically by Arbiter, roughly two years before the two companies merged. Anecdotal evidence behind the single known two-transistor Dallas Fuzzbug pedal even reveals that it was originally sold at Macari’s Musical Exchange,⁹⁸ which would have been a competitor of Arbiter’s retail outlets in London at the time.

Part 2: Overview

The Fuzz Face was incredibly simple in its operation. It was powered by a single 9-volt (PP3) battery, and like most of the other early fuzz boxes on the market, it was fitted with a basic on/off switch and two control knobs to set the volume and intensity of the fuzz effect.

Fuzz Faces were built into cast aluminium enclosures, and they were fitted with a steel bottom plate that enabled users to access the circuitry inside, and obviously also to replace the batteries. These bottom plates were fixed in place by a single (imperial 4BA) screw threaded down the centre of the pedal. Aligning the screw, bottom plate and the enclosure was awkward, and so Arbiter supplied earlier pedals with a tube to make changing batteries easier.

A distinctive feature that set the Fuzz Face apart from its contemporaries was the shape of its enclosure, and the cartoonish layout of the controls, rubber ‘beard’ and Arbiter ‘smile’. Up until this point, early fuzz boxes typically came in utilitarian square and wedge-shaped housings. The round shape of the Fuzz Face was reportedly inspired by the base of a microphone stand.⁹⁹

Another unusual marketing strategy deployed by Arbiter all the way from the Fuzz Face’s inception in 1966, until production in the UK ceased in the 1970s, was offering customers a choice of Fuzz Faces in different colours. The earliest Fuzz Faces were built red, black and hammered silver enclosures, but as time went on, Arbiter were selling various different kinds of blue and grey pedals as well.

After production of the British-built Fuzz Face was discontinued, there was a period in the late 1970s when Dallas Music Industries (DMI) manufactured pedals in the United States. The model then lay dormant until Crest Audio (a subsidiary of DMI) started building Fuzz Faces again in the mid-1980s,¹⁰⁰ and this was soon followed by Jim Dunlop’s reproductions, which are widely sold around the world to this day.

It has become common knowledge that earlier Fuzz Faces were built using germanium transistors, and that, after a few years, Arbiter redesigned the circuit to accommodate silicon transistors. A lot has been written about the perceived differences in sound quality between the various types of transistors, but in reality, there are a lot of different factors that contribute to the overall tone of a Fuzz Face (including the age and wear of some of the old parts).

Part 3: Analysis

This section goes into detail about the different types of Fuzz Faces built by (Dallas-)Arbiter during the 1960s. For such a simple pedal, there are actually a lot of different variables to look out for when ascertaining a pedal’s originality and date of production. In comparing the vintage Fuzz Faces in this section, references will be made to each pedal’s type of enclosure, the graphics, knobs, switches and the circuit & parts selection. This section also explores how these various features correlate with one another in the wide assortment of Fuzz Faces built by Arbiter over the course of a decade. It is strongly recommended to regularly refer to the glossary at the end of this article.

1966-1967 | Version 1

‘Thick print’ Fuzz Face

The three pedals pictured here are all early Fuzz Faces, dating to c. 1966-1967. They all have a heavier ‘thick’ version of the Fuzz Face logo, and are housed in Arbiter’s earliest type of cast enclosure. Because of the different graphics, these Fuzz Faces are often deemed by dealers and collectors to be the very first Fuzz Faces. Unfortunately, there isn’t any concrete evidence to support this theory. This is because, while the ‘thick print’ is indeed a feature that only appears on 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces, the three pedals pictured above also have other things in common with later Fuzz Faces. The same logic that is used to make a determination that pedals with one set of graphics must predate another set of graphics can also be applied to observations about schematics and parts selection, and it is therefore impossible at this stage to conclusively place these ‘thick print’ Arbiter Fuzz Faces at the beginning of the timeline.

Key features:

• They have all only ever been sighted with Bulgin ‘top hat’ type knobs, which Arbiter continued to use on certain versions of the Fuzz Face until the early 1970s
• When unmodified, these pedals always come fitted with Bulgin footswitches that have the moulded plastic inner mechanism, which is also something that appeared on some Fuzz Faces as late as the early 1970s
• They almost always use the ‘conventional’ germanium transistor circuit, with the blue 2.5µF input capacitor (although some exemplars have been sighted with the more uncommon 1.6µF input cap)
  
  

‘Thin print’ Fuzz Face

The pedals pictured above are also among the earliest Fuzz Faces. They were all built in the ‘first version’ enclosure, and they all feature the germanium transistor Fuzz Face circuit. In terms of cosmetics, the only thing that sets these Fuzz Faces apart from the 1966-1967 ‘thick print’ Fuzz Face is the more familiar ‘thin’ version of the Fuzz Face logo. This typeface would continue to be used on Arbiter Fuzz Faces through the 1970s, and also for the various modern day official reproduction Fuzz Faces.

Key features:

• Just like the 1966-1967 ‘thick print’ Fuzz Faces, in original condition, these pedals also boasted Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs and the Bulgin footswitch with the sealed inner mechanism
• The unusual and short-lived 5µF/30µF Marcon electrolytic capacitors have only ever been sighted in this Fuzz Faces with this specific combination of enclosure, font and hardware features
• Other exemplars of this type of 1966-1967 Fuzz Face are commonly sighted with the ‘conventional’ 2.5µF input capacitor, but they occasionally have the 1.6µF input capacitor instead
• The unusual colour combination of red paint with black silkscreened lettering has only ever been sighted on this version and the very similar ‘dial knobs’ version of the Fuzz Face
  
  

‘Dial knobs’ Fuzz Face

The main visual difference between this early Fuzz Face and the type in the previous section is obviously the type of knobs they were fitted with. These ‘dial’ knobs were seemingly only used by Arbiter for a limited period, but they can also be seen on Arbiter’s late 1960s Treble and Bass Face pedals, as well as some of the Arbiter/Sound City amplifiers. Notably, the ‘dial’ knobs can also be seen on the bizarre Fuzz Face pictured in Arbiter’s very earliest promotional material from 1966.

A small handful of 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces have surfaced bearing Arbiter’s ‘export’ stickers underneath, and these pedals happen to all be the ‘dial knobs’ variant, as pictured here. It’s clear, however, that not all Fuzz Faces with ‘dial’ knobs were built for the export market, because they resurface fairly regularly in the UK too.

Key features:

• When unmodified, Fuzz Faces with the ‘dial’ knobs have only ever been sighted with the earlier ‘wafer’ style Bulgin footswitch
• These pedals have also only ever been seen running the ‘conventional’ 2.5µF input capacitor version of the germanium Fuzz Face circuit
• The earliest known sets of potentiometer date codes in vintage Fuzz Faces (July & August 1966) come from some of these ‘dial knobs’ pedals, but this does not necessarily imply that they were among the very first built — they only show how difficult it is to place all the different 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces into chronological order
• As with the alternative ‘thin print’ 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces with ‘top hat’ knobs, the red pedals with ‘dial’ were also printed with graphics in the unusual black ink
• Use of the ‘dial’ knobs continued into the 1968 ‘version 2’ era of Fuzz Faces, although they’re a lot more uncommon to see
  
  

1968-1969 | Version 2

1968 ‘Arbiter · England’

These pedals were all built into the ‘second version’ enclosure. The easiest way to tell these enclosures apart from the earlier 1966-1967 version is by comparing the proportions of the ‘brow’ between the control knobs, where the ‘in’ and ‘out’ labels are printed. On this updated enclosure, the ‘brow’ is noticeably narrower than on the earlier Fuzz Faces, but not so much that the silkscreened graphics on the enclosure had to be changed — ‘second version’ Fuzz Face enclosures like these used identical graphics to the ‘thin print’ 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces.

The three pedals pictured above are all earlier examples of this ‘version 2’ Fuzz Face. Other features that were carried over from the 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces include the use of Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs, ‘Arbiter · England’ branding (as opposed to the later ‘Dallas-Arbiter’), and of course, the NKT275 germanium transistor circuit. Some of these ‘pre-Dallas’ Fuzz Faces were built using pots from the same parts supply as the 1966-1967 model, but they have also been sighted with pots dating as late as September 1968. Because the Dallas-Arbiter merge happened in Spring of that year,¹⁰¹ and because Arbiter apparently still had a supply of pre-merge enclosures in Autumn, we can quite safely say that these ‘version 2’ Fuzz Faces weren’t built prior to 1968.

Key features:

• Same colour schemes, graphics and ‘Arbiter · England’ branding as the 1966-1967 pedals
• Prior to the merge with Dallas, these Fuzz Faces were only ever built with the NKT275 germanium transistor Fuzz Face circuit (and 2.5µF/20µF input/bypass cap configuration)
• Only the Bulgin switch with the moulded plastic mechanism has ever been sighted in these pre-Dallas ‘version 2’ Fuzz Faces
• A small handful of these ‘pre-Dallas’ 1968 Fuzz Faces have also been sighted with the ‘dial’ knobs
  
  

1968-1969 ‘Dallas-Arbiter · England’

Arbiter seemingly built Fuzz Faces into these enclosures right around the time that the company merged with Dallas, because identical cases have been sighted branded as both ‘Arbiter · England’ and ‘Dallas-Arbiter · England’. Arbiter apparently also restocked potentiometers during the period that this enclosure was in use, as the earlier ‘second version’ (germanium transistor) Fuzz Face pedals still used the same pots dating to late 1966 as all of the ‘first version’ enclosure pedals. Some ‘second version’ Fuzz Faces have even been sighted with a combination of pots stamped with both 1966 and 1968 date codes. Because of this, it is fairly safe to say that Fuzz Faces in the ‘second version’ enclosure weren’t built prior to 1968.

The Arbiter Fuzz Face circuit went through a number of changes during the period when these ‘second version’ enclosures were being used. Many pedals came with the germanium NKT275 Fuzz Face circuit, but it was somewhere around late 1968 or early 1969 that Arbiter redesigned the Fuzz Face circuit to work with NPN silicon transistors.

Key features:

• ‘Dallas-Arbiter · England’ Fuzz Faces in this ‘version 2’ enclosure were used for both the silicon and the germanium circuits
• Generally speaking, ‘version 2’ Fuzz Faces with the black ‘top hat’ knobs (sometimes with silver discs on top) featured the NKT275 circuit; Fuzz Faces with the slimmer black knobs featured the BC183L circuit
• For reasons unknown, Dallas-Arbiter appeared to very briefly revisit this ‘second version’ enclosure in the early 1970s, as exemplified by a small handful of unusual BC130C Fuzz Faces (with 1970s-era parts) that have been discovered in these casings
  
  

1968-1969 | Version 3

Another version of the Fuzz Face enclosures came with a distinctly narrower middle ‘brow’ between the control knobs. These ‘third version’ enclosures with the narrow ‘brow’ were also used to house Arbiter’s Treble and Bass Face pedals, and this makes placing them into a timeline of Arbiter pedals rather confusing. Treble and Bass Faces housed in this narrow ‘brow’ enclosure have only ever been sighted with (pre-Dallas) Arbiter branding. Fuzz Faces in this type of casing, on the other hand, are only known to exist branded for the post-1968 merged Dallas-Arbiter company.

It is certainly possible that the ‘third version’ enclosures were originally intended for Treble and Bass Faces due to the way that the screen printed Fuzz Face logo doesn’t fit between the ‘volume’ and ‘fuzz’ controls, as per the original (1966-1968) graphics layout. Fuzz Faces in this ‘third version’ enclosure could have been made from Arbiter’s leftover enclosure supply after the Treble and Bass Face was discontinued, but this is entirely speculative.

Regardless of where the ‘narrow brow’ Treble and Bass Faces fit into the wider chronology, the potentiometer date codes for Fuzz Faces housed in this ‘third version’ casing strongly imply that they were built after Fuzz Faces in the ‘second version’ enclosures. Fuzz Faces with the ‘narrow brow’ typically come with potentiometer date codes spanning the period from late 1968 through to mid-1969.

Key features:

• Same three colour schemes as the earlier Fuzz Faces (silver, red and dark grey)
• Built with the BC183L, BC183KA and NKT275 versions of the Fuzz Face circuit (with as late as 1969 date codes)
• Only ever branded for Dallas-Arbiter
• Only ever fitted with the ‘thin’ knobs
  
  

1969-1976 | Version 4

The pedals pictured here were all built into Dallas-Arbiter’s fourth (and final) version of the Fuzz Face enclosure. By the time that Dallas-Arbiter had moved onto this new design, they also increased the range of colour schemes on offer, including various different blue, grey and red paintjobs over time.

The first pedal of the gallery above is the earliest of these ‘version four’ Fuzz Faces — it features a BC183KA transistor circuit, just like the last of the ‘version 3’ pedals, and which is consistent with a pedal built around 1969. Many of these ‘version 4’ Fuzz Faces came with the same Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs that Arbiter first used back in 1966. By 1972 (ascertained from potentiometer date codes), Dallas-Arbiter had moved onto using a different type of round knob for the Fuzz Faces, similar to the type famously used on Orange amplifiers at the time. The second pedal pictured in the gallery above features those ‘Orange’ style knobs, along with a BC108C circuit.

Dallas-Arbiter continued using the same silkscreened graphics as the ‘version three’ Fuzz Faces on these newer enclosures. At some point during the early 1970s, however, the company started applying the lettering to Fuzz Face enclosures with decals instead. The second pedal in the gallery above is an example of a Fuzz Face with the decal graphics — note the faint outline around the lettering that was left from the process of transferring the decal. Fuzz Faces with these decal graphics were certainly not built until the 1970s, because no pedals with ‘decal’ graphics have been sighted with 1960s potentiometer date codes.

Fuzz Faces continued being built into these ‘version 4’ enclosures, following the dissolution of Dallas-Arbiter, and along with a change in branding on the ‘smile’ of the pedal, these CBS/Arbiter & Dallas Music Industries (DMI) Fuzz Faces also demonstrated changes in graphics and knob types.

Key features:

• Only ever fitted with silicon transistor circuits (BC183KA, BC108C, BC209C, BC239C)
• The earliest ‘version 4’ Fuzz Faces may have been built in 1969, but the overwhelming majority are from the 1970s
• Branded as ‘Dallas-Arbiter’, ‘CBS/Arbiter’, and ‘Dallas Music Industries’, depending on the age
• Early ‘version 4’ Fuzz Faces had Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs; most built in the 1970s had the ‘Orange’ style knobs; the very last of the British-built (DMI) Fuzz Faces used a flatter skirted Bulgin knob
  
  

Part 4: Appendix

Boxes

Fuzz Faces were also packaged in a variety of different box designs over the years. A selection of 1960s-era Fuzz Face boxes is pictured above. The first box with the arching ‘Fuzz Face’ lettering is most likely the earliest design, and it has only been sighted together with first generation Fuzz Faces, c. 1966-1967. This particular box design was later reused for the short-lived Arbiter Fuzz Face reissued during the late 1990s.

The second box features a very early promotional photo of the Fuzz Face. The particular pedal photographed by Arbiter for that box has a number of unusual features (such as the typeface, the inverted controls and the enclosure shape), which have not been observed in any extant vintage Fuzz Face. It’s possible that the pedal in this early picture was some sort of prototype or ‘mock-up’, or that it was simply so limited in its production that none are known to have survived. The same photo was used in Arbiter’s advertising and on some of the earliest instructions sheets during the period of around 1966-1967. Interestingly, however, the pedals that have been found together with these boxes thus far all date to the period around late 1967/early 1968.

The third box pictured here, with its swirling psychedelic artwork, was introduced in the late 1960s, possibly to coincide with the formation of ‘Dallas-Arbiter’. These boxes were used to package Fuzz Faces until the dissolution of Dallas-Arbiter in the 1970s, but the design was revived in modern times by Dunlop Manufacturing Inc. for their reissue Fuzz Face pedals.

Germanium transistors

1966-1967 | NKT275

The Fuzz Face circuit features what is commonly described as a “textbook” shunt-series negative feedback amplifier circuit. Rather than drawing inspiration from a textbook, however, the specific mixture of parts values reveal that Arbiter simply copied the circuit from Sola Sound’s 1966 Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’. Arbiter even went as far as describing their pedal as a “Tone-Bending” unit in the instructions sheet that accompanied early Fuzz Faces.

Almost all of the parts values in the early Fuzz Faces match up with the ones in the two-transistor ‘MK1.5’ Tone Benders. The main difference, however, was that Arbiter opted to use [Newmarket] NKT275 PNP transistors instead of Mullard OC75 PNP transistors. The collector of the first transistor was also biased slightly differently in the Fuzz Face.

There have been myths swirling around over the last few decades about Arbiter opting to use AC128 and even SFT337 PNP transistors for some Fuzz Faces. Examination of photos of well over 100 surviving germanium transistor Fuzz Faces doesn’t reveal any evidence of transistors other than NKT275’s being used by Arbiter, and the vintage pedals that have surfaced with unusual transistor types all appear to have been modified or repaired over the years. Part of the misunderstanding about transistors may stem from the fact that Denis Cornell used AC128 transistors for Ivor Arbiter’s Fuzz Face reissue during the late 1990s.

That being said, there were still at least three slightly different iterations of the germanium Fuzz Face circuit being built during the early period of 1966-1969. The first circuit board pictured above features the most commonly-seen mixture of parts for a germanium Fuzz Face — notably, the two blue axial capacitors for blocking DC at the input, and the Q2 emitter bypass cap, reading 2.5µF and 20µF respectively.

The second image above is of what was apparently a short-lived version of the germanium Fuzz Face. The only difference being the 2.5µF input capacitor being replaced with a 1.6µF capacitor instead. There is no known explanation for why the smaller capacitor might have been used, but it may have contributed to a very slightly brighter fuzz sound. Germanium transistor Fuzz Faces built towards the end of the run (c. 1968-1969) reverted to using the conventional 2.5µF input cap, and as did the silicon transistor Fuzz Faces that followed through the 1970s.

Image #3 is of a more unusual version of the early Fuzz Face. The white/grey axial capacitors are made by Marcon, and the input and emitter bypass caps read 5µF and 30µF, respectively. The larger capacitors may contribute ever so slightly to a thicker and darker sound, but what makes the 5µF input cap particularly interesting is that it is the same value that was used for the input caps in the earlier Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’ that Arbiter based their own fuzz box on.

Below is a schematic and accompanying chart, which illustrates the similarities and differences between several different versions of the Fuzz Face and Tone Bender ‘MK1.5’, to give a clear idea of the relationship between Arbiter’s and Sola Sound’s products.

1968-1969 | NKT275

By the time that Arbiter’s cast aluminium enclosures were updated in 1968, the company was still building germanium transistor Fuzz Face circuits. Date codes on the pots of the Fuzz Face pictured above prove that production of the germanium Fuzz Face even continued into 1969.

These late-production germanium Fuzz Faces have only ever been sighted with what is often deemed the ‘conventional’ NKT275 circuit, with the blue axial 2.5µF input cap. Due to how Arbiter acquired 1966-dated pots in very large quantities, and apparently only resupplied in 1968, it isn’t uncommon to find 1966 date codes inside these later Fuzz Faces.

Interestingly, the same enclosures used for these later germanium Fuzz Faces were also used for some of the earliest silicon transistor Fuzz Faces. There is a strong likelihood that germanium Fuzz Faces were actually built in conjunction with silicon Fuzz Faces for a brief period around 1968-1969.

Silicon transistors

1968-1969 | BC183L, BC183KA

Towards the end of the 1960s, Arbiter’s Fuzz Face was redesigned, slightly, in order to accommodate NPN silicon transistors instead of the germanium NKT275 types. A selection of earlier silicon Fuzz Faces is pictured above. The very earliest type used BC183L transistors, and was housed in a ‘second version’ Dallas-Arbiter enclosure. These pedals typically come with pots dated October 1968. The BC183L circuit was also built into ‘third version’ enclosures, often featuring April 1969 date codes.

By mid-1969, at the earliest, Dallas-Arbiter moved onto using BC183KA transistors in the Fuzz Face. These circuit boards are easily differentiated from the BC183L boards due to the pink insulation on the transistor bases, as well as the yellow mustard capacitor used in the output position, instead of the rectangular chicklets on other versions of Fuzz Faces. BC183KA Fuzz Faces typically have pot codes dating to April and May 1969, and these circuits have been sighted in ‘third’ and ‘fourth’ version enclosures.

As mentioned previously, there is also a good possibility that Dallas-Arbiter were still building the last of the germanium Fuzz Faces alongside these earliest silicon ones. There is, however, no original (unmodified) silicon transistor Fuzz Face known to exist that was built prior to the Dallas-Arbiter merge.

1970s | BC108C, BC130C, BC239C, BC209C

Following the BC183L and BC183KA Fuzz Faces, towards the end of the 1960s (or possibly even by 1970) Dallas-Arbiter started using BC108C transistors. BC108C Fuzz Faces almost always appear in ‘fourth version’ enclosures, although for reasons unknown, they occasionally also appear in the much earlier ‘second version’ Dallas-Arbiter housing.

BC130C transistors were occasionally used around the same time, and in some very unusual pedals, circuit boards appear to have been populated with a combination of both BC108C and BC130C devices. Fuzz Faces built further on into the 1970s sometimes used BC209C and BC239C transistors.

The exact chronology of these different silicon Fuzz Faces is very murky, and the selection of resistors and capacitors used by Dallas-Arbiter during the 1970s varied by enough to justify writing a separate analysis entirely about 1970s-era Fuzz Faces. Additionally, like the earlier germanium pedals, it is very possible that different versions may have been built in conjunction for a period of time.

Different enclosures

The famous round enclosures that housed Fuzz Face (as well as Treble and Bass and Trem Face) pedals were made out of cast aluminium. It isn’t known whether Arbiter subcontracted a third party to manufacture these enclosures, or whether the company developed an in-house casting facility. Either way, this would prove to be an efficient and economical way to mass-produce Fuzz Faces from the very beginning.

Over the course of the decade that Fuzz Faces were being built, the casting process changed a few times. New moulds were created to replace old ones, and in total there were four different versions of the Fuzz Face enclosure, all with slightly different shapes and proportions. The composite photo above shows examples of all four versions. Comparing the differences between each of the four enclosure styles helps with the the estimation of a pedal’s date of production.

1966-1967 | Version 1

The pedal pictured top-left has been built into what is known as the first version enclosure. These early Fuzz Faces have a noticeably ‘chunkier’ feel to them, compared with later versions. A simple identifier is the wider ‘brow’ of the pedal (where the input and output sockets are labelled), in combination with a higher ‘Fuzz Face’ logo placement, and only ever the pre-Dallas ‘Arbiter — England’ smile. Fuzz Faces in this first version enclosure were built around the period of 1966-1967, and only ever with the germanium transistor circuit. Some Arbiter Treble and Bass Face pedals were also housed in these early enclosures.

1968-1969 | Version 2

To its right is a slightly younger Fuzz Face. Without close inspection of these later Fuzz Face enclosures, it can be difficult to differentiate them from the 1966-1967 model. This is because the placement of the screen printed graphics remained the same as on the earlier enclosures. The main difference to look out for is the way that the raised ‘brow’ for the jack sockets at the top of the pedal, between the controls, is narrower than on the earlier Fuzz Face. Date codes on the pots in these second enclosure style Fuzz Faces indicate a period of production around 1968-1969.

Some Fuzz Faces built into these enclosures were branded ‘Arbiter — England’, like the 1966-1967 version, but the majority are branded for ‘Dallas-Arbiter — England’, following the two companies’ merge in Spring 1968. What this means is that any vintage Fuzz Face pedal housed in this ‘second’ type of enclosure, regardless of any date codes on the pots inside, is unlikely to have been built prior to 1968.

1968-1969 | Version 3

Bottom left is a third enclosure type, which most likely also made its appearance in 1968. The ‘brow’ for the jack sockets is considerably narrower than any of the other enclosure designs, and it extends further down towards the centre of the pedal. This resulted in Arbiter having to update the Fuzz Face graphics, and position the Fuzz Face logo further down as well. Date codes in these ‘narrow brow’ Fuzz Faces confirm that they were built around the period of late 1968 to 1969.

Something interesting to note is that, while these ‘narrow brow’ Fuzz Faces were all branded ‘Dallas-Arbiter’ (and were therefore clearly built post-merge), the Treble and Bass Face pedals that were also housed in these ‘narrow brow’ enclosures were branded ‘Arbiter’, similar to the 1966-1967 pedals. This suggests that these third version enclosures may have initially been intended for Treble and Bass Faces.

1969-1976 | Version 4

Finally, Dallas-Arbiter redesigned the enclosure once again to something that looks closer to the very first Fuzz Face design. The pedal, pictured bottom-right, has a wider ‘brow’ once again, but it has the same text placement as the ‘narrow brow’ enclosures that preceded it. Dallas-Arbiter clearly didn’t see a point in revising the graphics again.

The first of the ‘fourth version’ enclosures came with the same screen printed graphics as the ‘narrow brow’ pedals, but at some point in the early 1970s, Dallas-Arbiter began using decals to transfer the graphics instead.

Date codes on the pots of Fuzz Faces in this enclosure prove that this version wasn’t being built prior to 1969, and that Dallas-Arbiter would continue building Fuzz Faces into this type of enclosure until production in the UK ceased in 1976. The enclosure that Dunlop has been using for reissue Fuzz Faces since the 1990s is based off this fourth type of vintage enclosure.

Graphics

The four pedals pictured in the previous section all have the same typeface for the ‘Fuzz Face’ logo, and this is also the same logo that is still being used on the modern Dunlop reissue Fuzz Faces. Some of the earliest vintage Fuzz Faces came printed with a heavier version of the ‘Fuzz Face’ font, as well as a slightly wider kerning for the control and jack socket labels.

The set of graphics printed on the pedal above with the black ‘top hat’ knobs was only used for some of the Fuzz Faces in the first version enclosure. This detail has lead collectors in modern times to believe that pedals with this ‘thick’ logo are among the very first Fuzz Faces that were built in 1966. It’s true that, of the two typefaces pictured here, it was the ‘thinner’ variant that Arbiter continued using on their subsequent Fuzz Faces through the late 1960s. It may seem intuitive that the ‘thick’ print must therefore predate the ‘thin’ print, however, we cannot rule out the strong possibility that the different designs may have been built alongside one another for a period of time. After all, Arbiter was mass-producing Fuzz Faces from the onset, and pedals with the so-called ‘early’ (thick) logo often feature potentiometers with December 1966 date codes. This is a strong indicator that at least some of these ‘thick print’ Fuzz Faces weren’t built until 1967.

As mentioned previously, Arbiter didn’t make any changes to the silkscreened graphics once they moved over to housing Fuzz Faces in the second version enclosure. Once Arbiter moved over to housing Fuzz Faces in the third version enclosure (with the ‘narrow’ brow), the placement of the Fuzz Face logo was lowered in order to fit it onto the casting’s different shape. This reworked version of the original silkscreened graphics continued being printed on the fourth Fuzz Face enclosure type, which was introduced somewhere around 1969-1970, and was being made until the mid-1970s.

The most notable change to the graphics on Arbiter’s Fuzz Faces came about somewhere around 1971-1972, when the process of printing with silkscreens was replaced with transferring text to the casings from decals. The two pedals pictured above were both made in the early 1970s (according to their potentiometer date codes), however the pedal on the left has silkscreened graphics, whereas the one on the right has the visible outline around the text from where the decal was placed. Because the last of the silkscreened Fuzz Faces sometimes come with 1970 date codes on the parts inside, we can be certain that pedals with the ‘decal’ graphics weren’t built until the 1970s.

Knobs

Pictured above are the three types of knobs that were used for the Arbiter and Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Faces, during the 1960s. The sort of knob fitted to a vintage Fuzz Face can often be a good indicator of the specific version of the Fuzz Face circuit has been built inside. Inversely, the different types of knobs that Arbiter used for their 1960s-era Fuzz Faces also correlate with parts selection and the different versions of the graphics printed to the casings, so we can use technical clues from a Fuzz Face to select vintage-correct replacement knobs when the originals have been lost.

1) Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs

This black skirted knob was manufactured by Bulgin, and is one of the more common sorts of knobs fitted to Fuzz Faces. These knobs (sometimes known affectionately as ‘top hats’) were used on Fuzz Faces as early as in 1966, when Jimi Hendrix was photographed performing in Germany with a black Fuzz Face equipped with them.¹⁰² These knobs appeared exclusively on germanium transistor Fuzz Faces (including during the period around 1968 when the company appeared to make germanium and the earliest silicon Fuzz Faces simultaneously).

The germanium transistor circuit of the Fuzz Face was discontinued in place of the various silicon transistor circuits at some point around 1969, however, the Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs made a brief reappearance in around 1970, when Dallas-Arbiter fitted them to Fuzz Faces housed in the ‘fourth version’ enclosure.

Some of the later germanium Fuzz Faces, built around the period of late 1968 to 1969, came with Bulgin ‘top hats’ that had an attractive additional silver disc fitted to them. In some cases, the adhesive used for these silver tops apparently hasn’t stood the test of time, and the pedal above reveals that without the silver disc attached, the ‘top hat’ is exactly the same as the conventional type.

Interestingly, there is a near-perfect correlation between Arbiter’s use of the Bulgin ‘top hat’ knob, and the Bulgin footswitch with the sealed plastic inner mechanism. In other words, a vintage Fuzz Face that comes equipped with the Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs will almost certainly also come with the sealed Bulgin footswitch. This correlation appears with the earliest Fuzz Faces, around 1966-1967, but can be still observed in the early 1970s, until (Dallas-)Arbiter switched over to different knobs and switches.

2) Sato ‘dial’ knobs

These ‘dial’ knobs were made by the Sato Parts Co., Ltd., in Japan, and they were also used on some of the earliest Fuzz Faces during the period of 1966-1968 (as well as Arbiter’s Treble and Bass Face pedals).

The very earliest known image of a Fuzz Face pedal was featured on Arbiter’s early advertising in 1966. This pedal has some very obvious cosmetic differences compared with actual vintage 1966-1967 Fuzz Faces, which gives us reason to speculate whether it might have just been a prototype or a mock-up. It is nonetheless interesting to note that even this very earliest Arbiter pedal is equipped with the Sato ‘dial’ knobs.

The earliest set of known date codes in Fuzz Faces (July 1966) have also thus far only been observed stamped to potentiometers in pedals with the ‘dial’ knobs. Arbiter Fuzz Faces fitted at the factory with ‘dial’ knobs thus far also have a perfect correlation with the use of Bulgin footswitches with ‘wafer’ style mechanisms (as opposed to the more commonly-seen sealed black plastic mechanism). These ‘dial’ knobs have also only ever been sighted on Fuzz Faces with the ‘thin’ version of the graphics, built into the ‘first’ and ‘second’ enclosure types.

A later photo of the Arbiter Fuzz Face with ‘dial’ knobs began appearing in Arbiter’s advertising in 1967,¹⁰³ and pedals with the same knobs are visible in a photo of the Arbiter booth at the BMII trade fair held in August of that year.¹⁰⁴

3) 1968-1969 thin knobs

The manufacturer of these knobs isn’t known, but they are fairly common to find on Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Faces built during the late 1960s.

The very first Fuzz Faces that have been sighted with these knobs have potentiometers stamped with October 1968 date codes, and it’s interesting to note that the use of these thin black plastic knobs happens to correlate perfectly with the introduction of the BC183L silicon transistor circuit. When the BC183L circuit was revised with BC183KA transistors in 1969, Arbiter continued to use these thinner knobs for the silicon Fuzz Faces. Meanwhile, the germanium Fuzz Faces from that period still came with Bulgin ‘top hats’ described at the beginning of this section.

The earliest silicon Fuzz Faces (with BC183L and BC183KA transistors) appear to have been built alongside the last of the germanium units, and as a result, they all came housed in identical (‘second’ and ‘third’ version) enclosures. Determining whether the pedals have these thinner knobs, or whether they have the Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs, is a relatively safe way to differentiate between germanium and silicon Fuzz Faces without examining the electronics inside.

There are always anomalies, however, when it comes to analysing vintage Fuzz Faces, and the very last of the germanium Fuzz Faces (housed in the ‘third version’ enclosure, with pots dating to 1969) sometimes also came with these mysterious ‘thinner’ knobs.

1970s ‘Orange’ knobs

These round knobs started appearing on Fuzz Faces in the early 1970s, replacing the Bulgin ‘top hats’ on silicon transistor Fuzz Faces. The knobs might have been made by Schurter, and they’re very similar (if not identical) to the knobs that were famously also fitted to Orange amplifiers at the time.

Fuzz Faces with these later round knobs typically feature pots that are stamped with 1972 date codes, and so it’s a certainty that any Fuzz Face with these round ‘Orange’ style knobs wasn’t built prior to the 1970s.

Footswitches

Bulgin laminated “wafer” switch

Some of the earliest Arbiter Fuzz Faces (c. 1966-1967) were fitted with a ‘wafer’ style double-pole/double-throw (DPDT) footswitch. Not to be confused with the very similar looking ‘wafer’ style DPDT switches made by Arrow (as used in Buzzarounds and early Sola Sound & Vox Tone Benders) — these switches were made by Bulgin.

Due to its appearance, this type of construction is known colloquially as a wafer. In Bulgin’s advertising, however, they are described as having a “laminated construction”. DPDT switches with the metal push-button were assigned the number ‘270’ in Bulgin’s catalogue, and the same identifier is debossed into the clasp holding the wafer together.

These laminated ‘wafer’ switches were only fitted to Fuzz Faces for a brief period during the mid-to-late 1960s. Interestingly, ‘wafer’ switches seem to appear almost exclusively on germanium Fuzz Faces with ‘thin’ print and the Sato ‘dial’ knobs.

Bulgin “moulded” switch

These Bulgin switches were virtually identical to the wafer model pictured previously. Other than the slightly different layout of the contacts, the main difference is that the inner mechanism of the switch has been sealed in what Bulgin described as a “polished black moulded body”. It isn’t known when Bulgin’s range of moulded switches were developed, but these apparently supplemented the existing range of laminated wafer switches. In 1969, Bulgin reported their intention for these moulded switches to ultimately replace the inferior wafer types.¹⁰⁵

Bulgin DPDT switches with the moulded body were used on some of the earliest Fuzz Faces in the period around 1966-1967, including the rare variant with the 5μF/30μF electrolytic capacitors. Fuzz Faces printed with the ‘thick’ version of the graphics also appear to have been fitted exclusively with these switches.

Similar to how the Bulgin ‘wafer’ switches were used for pedals that happened to also feature Sato ‘dial’ knobs, Arbiter’s use of moulded switches correlates with the Bulgin ‘top hat’ knobs instead. This is an important observation when selecting suitable replacement parts for vintage pedals. For example, a vintage 1966-1967 Fuzz Face that is missing its knobs, but retains an original moulded Bulgin switch, can be fitted with replacement ‘top hat’ knobs in order to be historically accurate.

As well as on early Fuzz Faces, these Bulgin moulded footswitches can be sighted on some ‘version 4’ Fuzz Faces, built around the early 1970s

Arrow switches

For reasons unknown, Dallas-Arbiter went through a period of using Arrow DPDT footswitches instead of the usual Bulgin type. These switches were functionally the same as the Bulgins, although the Arrows generally seem to have stood the test of time because it’s actually quite unusual to find a Fuzz Face (or indeed any pedal) with a faulty Arrow switch, compared with the rather unreliable Bulgins.

The earliest sighting of an Arrow footswitch in a Fuzz Face is the ‘version 2’ Dallas-Arbiter model, and specifically, the BC183L version. Arrows remained in use for BC183L, BC183KA and NKT275 Fuzz Faces until around 1969-1970, when Dallas-Arbiter returned to using moulded Bulgins again. Confusingly, some very late NKT275 Fuzz Faces (c. 1969) still came with the moulded Bulgin switches.

1970s Bulgin switches

Dallas-Arbiter continued using Bulgin DPDT footswitches through the 1970s, until production of the Fuzz Face in the UK ceased around 1976. Two later versions of Bulgin switches are pictured above, and it is very safe to say that any vintage Fuzz Face that was fitted with one of those from the factory wasn’t built prior to the 1970s.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Extra special thanks to Electric Warrior/J. Voggenthaler for diligently saving and sharing photos of vintage Fuzz Faces for the last 15 years

The post Arbiter Fuzz Face appeared first on Fuzzboxes.

Overview

Carlsbro was a British guitar amplifier manufacturer, founded by Stuart & Sheila Mercer in Nottingham, in 1959.⁸⁰ Carlsbro was formally registered as a company on the 5th of September 1962.⁸⁷ The company initially supplied amplifiers directly to musicians in the Midlands, and quickly established a retail outlet on 4-5 Station Street, in Mansfield, close to the headquarters on 45 Sherwood Street.⁹⁴

By 1969, Carlsbro’s shop in Mansfield was named the ‘Carlsbro Sound Centre’,⁹⁶ and during the 1970s, several other Carlsbro Sound Centres were opened across northern England, including in Leicester, Nottingham & Sheffield.¹⁰¹ In 1975, Carlsbro’s Mansfield Sound Centre finally relocated from its original Station Road address, to a larger premises on Chesterfield Road North.¹⁰⁶

In addition to the official Carlsbro retail outlets, Carlsbro’s amplifiers and accessories (including the Fuzz-Tone) were also sold by other retailers in the UK.¹⁰⁷ The early Carlsbro fuzz pedals having been available to purchase as early as by 1966 was also supported by the original owner of one¹⁰⁸ and by the date codes on the potentiometers of surviving exemplars.

Tech specs

The Carlsbro Fuzz-Tone was housed in a folded steel enclosure, which was finished in a dark blue hammertone. Like many early British-built fuzz boxes, Carlsbro’s pedal was powered by the now-obsolete cylindrical PP4 (9 volt) batteries. The electronic components were populated onto an eyelet board, and the general operation of the pedal was largely the same as the various other fuzz boxes that were being developed at the time.

In fact, the shape of the enclosure and the construction of the electronics are almost identical to Gibson’s famous Maestro Fuzz-Tone. Some might be surprised, however, to learn that Carlsbro’s fuzz box actually featured a different electronic circuit to any others of its known contemporaries. Unlike the majority of the early fuzz boxes (built on either side of the Atlantic) the Carlsbro Fuzz-Tone was not a direct copy of Gibson’s product.

Pictured above is a scan of the original factory schematic for Carlsbro’s Fuzz-Tone. This schematic was acquired from Carlsbro by Bart Provoost before the original company was sold to its current owners. Interestingly, the engineer who drew up the circuit in 1966 has mistakenly flipped the PP4 battery’s polarity around. The triplet of OC71 germanium transistors used for these Carlsbro fuzz boxes are PNP types and require a positive ground to work in this circuit.

Notable users

Notable recordings featuring the Carlsbro Fuzz-Tone include Skip Bifferty’s ‘On love’,¹⁰⁹ and the Sorrows’ ‘Pink, purple, yellow & red’.¹¹⁰

Pictured above are the remains of the actual Carlsbro fuzz pedal that was formerly owned by the Sorrows. This pedal travelled with the group to Italy, where they lived for a while, and was at one point repainted in silver Hammerite.

Sola Sound pedals

It is not known for how long production of the blue wedge-shaped 1966 Carlsbro Fuzz-Tone lasted, but the very low number of known surviving examples suggests that the model had a rather limited availability.

By the early 1970s, however, Carlsbro offered a new fuzz box, which was this time supplied to them by Sola Sound. According to date stamps inside surviving original pedals, the Sola Sound version of the Carlsbro fuzz was manufactured at least until 1976. This three-knob pedal was identical to the various fuzz boxes that Sola Sound were also supplying to other companies (such as Park and Vox) at the time, as well as to the Tone Bender [MKIV] that Sola Sound were selling under their own brand name.

There was clearly a greater demand for a fuzz box from Carlsbro by the 1970s, because the number of surviving three-knob, Sola Sound-built Carlsbro pedals dwarfs the earlier wedge-shaped pedal from 1966 by a significant margin.

Share your fuzz!

I welcome any comments, feedback, queries & corrections in relation to the Fuzzboxes.org project. Please get in touch via this contact form (or on the ‘contact‘ page).

Much of our understanding of the development of 1960s fuzz boxes comes from analysis of surviving pedals themselves, and so photos of pedals belonging to readers are particularly useful in furthering this research.

If you would like to contribute pictures of 1960s-era guitar effects to Fuzzboxes.org, then feel free to send in any pictures via the uploader below. Photos are greatly appreciated, and any submissions are not published on this website without advance agreement with the contributor.

Thanks to J. Turnbull, R. Lomas & A. Jewell.

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